


two roads diverged (or, the importance of stevie nicks)

by artificiallale



Category: RuPaul's Drag Race RPF
Genre: Christmas fic, F/F, Internalised Homophobia, Lesbian AU, Rom-com, every version of katya in any conceivable universe loves twin peaks, featuring christmas magic! (kind of), lots of silliness
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-01
Updated: 2018-04-12
Packaged: 2019-02-08 22:56:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 33,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12874830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/artificiallale/pseuds/artificiallale
Summary: “Trixie.”Katya sounds upset, her voice breathier than usual, and it makes Trixie’s stomach clench uncomfortably.“Can you call me back when you get home? I’m sorry if I upset you. I...Please, just call me back, okay?”The machine beeps.“Trixie.”Katya’s voice sounds stronger now and Trixie presses her fingertips together under her chin, can feel the backs of her calves cramping a little at the way she’s crouched over the machine.“Trixie, that was a really shitty thing to do, you know that, don’t you? Don't you, Trix? Just..can you call me back so we can talk about this?”Beep.“Trixie. Trixie, it can’t have taken you this long to drive home. Can you please just call me? This is so stupid, I’m not fighting with you about this, I—”Trixie skips to the next message.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> hello! it's past midnight here which means it's officially december, so it's time to share this little christmas fic! 
> 
> this isn't meant to be taken seriously at all, and by that i mean that i came up with the concept of this fic when a few months ago i caught the last forty or so minutes of thirteen going on thirty on the tv, fell asleep and woke up with an entire plan in my head of how to take a silly, charming rom-com and use it to make something ridiculous, gay and holidays-themed.
> 
> this fic is referred to as a christmas one in a loose sense: it's set around christmas and the characters involved celebrate christmas in a very secular way. i hope everyone will be able to enjoy regardless of how you feel about christmas! 
> 
> there's plenty of hand-wave-y, rom-com-y magic in this fic, as well as the usual tropes. the first chapter is a lot of exposition and is intentionally a little confusing, so please bear with me and know that i know exactly where this is going!
> 
> this story is set in december 2002. sort of. you'll see!
> 
> as always, thanks to everyone who's helped me while i was writing this, particularly [matilda_queen](http://archiveofourown.org/users/matilda_queen) and [djoodigarland](http://archiveofourown.org/users/djoodigarland) for their constant support and most of all to [DahliasForKatya](http://archiveofourown.org/users/dahliasforkatya) for championing this fic ever since i first mentioned it to her. thank you <3
> 
> i hope you enjoy! please leave a comment to let me know what you think, and come talk to me @[crackerdyke](http://www.crackerdyke.tumblr.com) on tumblr about it too if you want to!

It’s dark outside as Trixie scrambles into her car, fumbles to pull her seatbelt across her body and prays the engine will start on the first go. It doesn’t; she curses aloud and tries again, squeezes her eyes shut and when it starts on the second try she pulls away as quickly as she can manage.

Trixie’s mom doesn’t like her driving after dark. She’s eighteen years old and her mom’s fairly chilled out about pretty much everything else these days, which means that when she gets on Trixie’s case about driving at night it’s hard to put up a fight about it. When she was first driving she would never let her use the car when it was late, would get her brother to give her a ride or make her stay home. It’s only recently she’s let up a little, but most of the time she’s only okay with Trixie driving at night if she’s got someone to keep her company, which usually means making sure that Katya will be with her.

Katya. She doesn’t want to think about Katya right now.

Her mom thinks that she’s with Katya right now, that she’ll still be at Katya’s for at least a few more days. She won’t be expecting Trixie home tonight at all, let alone this late; she’ll want an explanation as to why Trixie’s plans have changed, and Trixie doesn’t want to have to come up with one.

So she decides that she won’t go home, not just yet. It's already late, so she may as well stay out a little longer; besides, the later she gets back the more likely it is that she might be able to slip inside without anyone noticing her, avoid having to explain herself until the morning.  
  
She drives past Kim's old house on her way around the neighbourhood. She doesn't know anything about the family who live there now but there's a huge Christmas tree in the window, she can see the rows of lights set up around the doorway even if they're not lit up. Kim's family never did a lot in the way of Christmas decorations and it's weird to see her house decked out for the holidays; Trixie can't think of the last time she drove past here, isn't sure if she even has, really, since Kim's family moved. Maybe she could call her when she gets home, she thinks, taps her fingers against the steering wheel in turn as she does the mental math to figure out what time it'll be for her there. Shea would probably be a more straightforward choice if she wants to call someone, but even though the other side of Chicago feels a million miles away there isn't any time difference between them: it's just as late for her as it is for Trixie and she knows Shea doesn't have her own phone line. She doesn't want to face the wrath of Shea's mom for waking up the whole house past midnight.

That doesn't leave her with a lot of options. Katya's usually her go to choice if she needs to talk to someone and they've figured out a good system ever since Trixie moved into her brother's old room and got her own line. He’d only persuaded their mom to put one into his room after they’d all had to suffer through months of their line always being tied up by his girlfriend’s incessant calls, and their mom had agreed to put a line into his room to save everyone else’s sanity. Now that he’s gone, Trixie gets to have the line all to herself, and most of the time it’s used to call Katya. They have it all worked out: she can call Katya late, let it ring once, then put the phone down and wait for Katya to call her back, pick up before it makes too much noise. It works pretty flawlessly for them, especially since Trixie's mom is now three rooms away and Katya doesn't share a wall with her parents, either; the couple of times they've been caught talking late on the phone have pretty much always come from one of them laughing too loud and waking someone up.

Trixie can't exactly call Katya about this.  
  
So she keeps driving around, ends up passing by Alaska's house. They must have left almost two hours ago by now but she can still hear music playing even from her car and Trixie wonders what state the house is going to be in by the morning. Alaska seemed to be having a good time when they left, at least, drunk and dancing in her lounge with her friends. It had been a fun party – for the most part, pretty much right up until the end – but Trixie had been more than ready to leave by the time Katya suggested that they should, felt glad she'd agreed to drive so they didn't have to wait around for anyone else before they could go. They'd considered trying to find a ride but couldn't find anyone going who lived near enough to Katya and Trixie's brother wasn't going to be back from college for a few days still. They couldn't ask Katya's parents since they were visiting family until the 24th now: Trixie staying over at Katya's after the party at Alaska's place was supposed to be the start of a long weekend of hanging out at Katya's place before Christmas and family obligations kept them separated until the New Year, after Katya had fought her parents to be allowed to stay home by herself.

That had been their great plan, anyway. Now Trixie isn’t sure how she’s going to fill the days before Christmas, all plans abandoned the moment she left Katya’s house. She hadn’t considered what would happen if things changed and she didn’t end up staying at Katya’s; it hadn’t even crossed her mind that something like this would happen. Why would it? It never has before. 

They’ve never really had any kind of problem before, not in all of the time Trixie’s known Katya. Granted, it hasn’t been all that long, just shy of two years since Katya's family moved here. But the two of them had clicked from almost the beginning, so maybe two years of friendship feels longer than it should do.  
  
It isn't like Trixie doesn't have other friends. Sure, she doesn't exactly get to see Kim and Shea all that often – or never, in Kim's case, since she moved across the world and now there's math involved if they even want to try to get online at the same time – but there are other people at school she gets along with just fine. There's Courtney and Adore, and sometimes she studies with Max if Katya's busy. She used to be good friends with Pearl, but since Shea and Kim left they've drifted apart: Trixie has Katya and Pearl has Violet, and by extension the group of girls Violet hangs out with, all painfully pretty and cool. Trixie had seen them earlier at Alaska's party, all sat together in a corner of one room acting as if no one else even existed. Trixie's never quite been able to squash her fascination with them, especially since Pearl and Violet got absorbed into the fold. Sometimes she fantasises about what it would be like to be one of them, how it would feel to be one of the Cool Girls and know that everyone was paying attention to her.  
  
But really, in the grand scheme of things, Trixie doesn't mind being pretty invisible. She has Katya, after all. Katya has her own friends besides Trixie, of course: Katya's always been one of those people everyone likes, who everyone likes to think of as their best friend, and Katya's usually happy to go along with that. But despite what anyone else might want to think, Katya likes Trixie best. 

And Trixie likes that.  
  
She isn't sure what will happen now. Doesn't really want to think about it, is grateful for the school break to give her some time before she has to deal with whatever comes next after tonight. 

Trixie fumbles to turn on the CD player in her car, hopeful that it might drown out some of the thoughts she's struggling to shut down. It takes a second to start but then Stevie Nicks is singing about thunder and rain, _women, they will come and they will go_ and Trixie switches over to the radio as quickly as she can. The words hit a little too close to home right now and besides, she can never quite separate Katya from Fleetwood Mac. 

She scans through the stations until she finds Pat Benatar singing about how love is a battlefield, decides it'll do since she isn't about to start relating the lyrics back to her best friend – even though she can already imagine Katya screeching along with the lyrics in the passenger seat if she were with her.  
  
She wonders what Katya's doing right now. Even though Trixie was the one driving she doesn't think Katya had had all that much to drink at Alaska's: she'd seemed pretty sober by the time they got back to her place anyway. She'd been a little on edge but Trixie can't really blame her after what had happened. Now Trixie's left her behind and she can't shake the image of her all by herself, probably curled up on her bed wondering what to do.  
  
Trixie can't let herself dwell on it. She just wants to forget what happened and she knows she isn't going to be able to if she keeps thinking about it, replaying it over and over in her head.  
  
A glance down at her dash tells her that she's almost running on empty, so once she reaches a gas station she pulls in. As she's getting out of the car she spots a vaguely familiar figure by the entrance and she squints a little as she tries to figure out who it is.  
  
"Oh, fuck. No, not now, please, not now," she murmurs under her breath as she realises who it is, wonders if it's too late to get back into her car and find somewhere else to get gas. But apparently she's already been spotted so she resists the urge to try to escape, plasters a smile onto her face instead.  
  
"Hi, Jinkx," she says, tries not to sound like she'd do anything to avoid talking to her right now.  
  
"Trixie Mattel," Jinkx says. Trixie didn’t think she lived around this part of town, but the last thing she wants to do is ask questions and end up deeper into a conversation than she wants to be. "I didn't think I'd see you here. Did you have fun at Alaska's?" she asks. There's something about her smile that puts Trixie on her guard, and she shrugs in response.  
  
"Sure. It was fine. What about you?"  
  
"Oh, you know how these things are," Jinkx says with a vague wave of her arm. Trixie doesn't know how these things are, but she isn't going to engage her any further.  
  
"Right, well," Trixie says, gestures to her car in the hopes that Jinkx will leave her be.  
  
"You shouldn't listen to what they say, you know?" Jinkx says, doesn't seem to get Trixie's hint.  
  
"What?" Trixie says.  
  
"You shouldn't listen to what they say," Jinkx repeats.  
  
"I don't know what you're talking about," Trixie insists. Jinkx hums thoughtfully.  
  
"Where's Katya? You two are normally joined at the hip," she says.  
  
"We don't spend all our time together," Trixie says, can't help get defensive. From the way Jinkx smirks it seems like that was the reaction she was expecting. 

“You shouldn’t let them get to you,” she says.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Trixie says again. This is exactly what she wanted to avoid, and she wishes she’d abandoned all attempts at politeness and bailed when she first spotted Jinkx. 

Trixie knows exactly what they say about Jinkx. That she’s weird, that she’s a freak. 

That she’s a witch. 

Jinkx brought that idea upon herself back in their freshman year when she dyed her red hair pitch black and stopped wearing any clothes that fit her, took to wearing billowing dresses and crystal jewelry. It’s not like anyone really thinks she's some kind of _real_ witch, but from the books on witchcraft and paganism Trixie’s spotted her reading in study hall and the gossip she's overheard in the hallway about her dragging Dela to some kind of coven meeting during one full moon – not to mention the narcolepsy, which, despite a lot of people’s scepticism, Trixie’s pretty sure is real after seeing her pass out in the middle of class a couple of years back – it seems like the whispers about her aren't far from the truth. 

Jinkx doesn't seem to care about them all that much. She has plenty of friends of her own, Dela and Ivy and Trixie knows she gets on well with Alaska and her friends, saw her hanging out with them earlier at the party. It doesn’t seem to bother her, what people say about her – mostly the girls Pearl and Violet are friends with. Trixie kind of admires her apparent ability to totally ignore them, really. It’s not like she can not know about them: Trixie’s heard a lot of rumours about her. 

Trixie doesn’t doubt that there’s truth to those rumours and Jinkx’s appearance in front of her right now is cause alone to believe them, with at least one big, dark shawl wrapped around her shoulders, swirling black skirts and heavy boots sticking out from underneath. The sunglasses at night in December are just the right addition to round out the outfit, though Trixie can’t really blame her for them given that she can remember the day Jinkx showed up at school with half of her eyebrows shaved off. They must be growing back in now but Trixie can’t be sure with the way they're hidden behind the glasses. 

 _“Why aren’t we friends with her?”_ Katya had hissed at her when they spotted Jinkx’s dramatic new look, grabbing Trixie’s bicep and looking at her with wide eyes. 

 _“Aren’t you already? I thought you were friends with everyone?”_ Trixie had replied with a roll of her eyes.

Katya had thrown her head back and laughed, linked her arm through Trixie’s properly and said, _“Don’t be jealous, Trixie. Pink is much more your colour than green.”_  

"Trixie?" Jinkx says, and Trixie almost startles.  
  
"What?" she says, folds her arms across her chest. Jinkx still has that infuriating smile on her face.  
  
"You seem stressed out," she says. Trixie almost laughs at the ridiculousness of the entire situation, the fact that it's past midnight and instead of hanging out with her best friend she's standing outside a gas station with a local weirdo.  
  
"I'm fine, Jinkx, don't worry about me," she says. "I really should—"  
  
Jinkx interrupts her attempt to escape by grabbing her hand. Her grip isn't tight but when Trixie instinctively tries to pull her hand back she holds on, doesn't let her move.  
  
"You're a Virgo, right?" Jinkx says. She's looking at Trixie's palm, thumb pressing against the fleshy part just above her wrist.  
  
"Leo," Trixie says. She's feeling increasingly uncomfortable as the seconds go on, and the sceptical look Jinkx gives her when she finally looks up at her again doesn't help things.  
  
"Cusp?" she asks.  
  
"I guess," Trixie says, "can I have my hand back now?" 

Jinkx hums, looks back down at her palm again, traces her thumb over the lines running across it. "No wonder you're stressed out," she says, ignores Trixie's request altogether. "You have a big decision to make, don’t you?"  
  
"I really have no idea what you're talking about," Trixie says, "why won't you just let me go?"  
  
Jinkx looks up at her and a wide smile blooms across her face. She reaches up and takes her sunglasses off with her free hand, looks Trixie straight in the eye.  
  
"I hope you make the right choice," she says, sounds solemn even through her smile, and finally lets go of Trixie's hand. It feels like it's stinging when Trixie pulls it back and she holds it in her other hand, watches Jinkx as she replaces her sunglasses.  
  
"You really _are_ a freak," she breathes, doesn't even realise she's saying it aloud until Jinkx's smile grows impossibly bigger.  
  
"Have a good Christmas, Trixie Mattel," she says. Her skirts swish around her calves as she turns away from Trixie, and with her dark hair and dark clothes she seems to disappear into the night almost immediately.  
  
"What the hell," Trixie whispers to herself. She realises how cold she is, that she's shivering where she's been standing next to her car this whole time. She shakes her hand a little, trying to ease the stinging that must have come from Jinkx's grip, and climbs back into her car. She can't shake the unease in the pit of her stomach after such a weird interaction.  
  
_That's why we're not friends with her_ , she thinks, finally answering Katya's question all these months later. She wishes she was there with her to make sense of what Jinkx was talking about, or at least to laugh with her at the insanity of the entire thing.  
  
Trixie shakes her head. Once she's finally managed to start the engine to her car she cranks the radio up loud as she drives away. 

 _And the days go by, like a strand in the wind—_  

“No!” Trixie bashes her hand against the steering wheel in frustration and skips through to the next station she can find. Of course the first station she picks is playing Stevie Nicks, because the universe just can’t let her take her mind off Katya for even a few minutes. 

 _It's hard to think about what you've wanted, it's hard to think about what you've lost—_  

“What the fuck!” Trixie says, louder this time. She almost swerves across the road as she changes the station again. 

 _Make a path to the rainbow’s end—_  

 _Dancing away from you now—_  

 _Damn your love, damn your lies._  

“Oh my god!” Trixie shuts the radio off, swallows hard and tries to focus on the road instead of on the night that's getting weirder and weirder with every moment.

 

***

 

It isn't until Trixie's pulling up outside her house that she realises she's forgotten her plan to stay away as long as possible, so distracted by her weird encounter with Jinkx and every radio station in the area's apparent attempt to sabotage her efforts to distract herself from thinking about Katya that she's driven herself straight home on autopilot.  
  
Still, a glance at her watch tells her that it's almost one in the morning, certainly late enough that everyone inside should be asleep. Hopefully, she thinks to herself as she climbs out of the car, she'll be able to slip inside and get into her room without disturbing anyone; if she's really lucky then it's possible no one will notice that she's around until tomorrow evening, since her mom's supposed to be taking her sisters to get her brother from college. She shuts her car door as quietly as she possibly can even though she's still a hundred feet away from the house – her mom's always said that since she had kids she's lost the ability to sleep through even the smallest amount of noise, and Trixie wouldn't put it past her to wake up at the sound of her closing a car door a little too heavily in the middle of the night.  
  
As it turns out, she had no reason to try to be sneaky. When she gets inside the light in the kitchen is on and her mom's sat at the table, newspaper spread out in front of her.  
  
"Mom? Why are you still awake?" Trixie asks. She's so surprised that she forgets entirely that having to talk to her mom was the last thing she wanted to deal with.  
  
"Oh! I was starting to get worried, where the hell were you?" Her mom turns to face her, takes off her glasses. She looks tired, and Trixie isn't surprised: she's never usually up this late.  
  
"I was at Katya's," she says, a little cautiously as she realises her mom must already know that something's up if she was expecting Trixie home.  
  
"And where have you been for the past hour?" her mom presses. "Don't lie to me. The phone in your room has been ringing non-stop, it woke me up."  
  
_Traitor_ , Trixie thinks viciously.  
  
"Just...driving," she says lamely when she can't think of a better explanation. Her mom's lips are strained in a thin line, elbows propped on the table and fingers laced together.  
  
"You know I don't like you driving in the dark by yourself," she says in a quiet voice.  
  
"I know," Trixie says, nodding, "I didn't think I would. It just happened."  
  
"Did something happen at your party?"  
  
"No. I just wanted to come home," Trixie says. She starts edging towards the doorway, hoping that she might be able to escape to her room, but her mom raises an eyebrow at her. She stops mid-shuffle.  
  
"Mmhm. And that's why Katya's called you a half dozen times in the last hour?"  
  
_Traitor!_ Trixie thinks again, even more venom to it this time.  
  
"I guess she wanted to make sure that I got home okay," she suggests.  
  
"Trixie," her mom sighs, pinches the bridge of her nose.  
  
"What are you looking at?" Trixie asks, desperate for a distraction. Her mom looks down at the newspaper, the uncapped pen sat in front of her.  
  
"Oh," she says, and this time she's the one who sounds uncertain.  
  
"Are you looking at houses again? Back in Milwaukee?" Trixie asks. 

“Trixie,” her mom says, something of a warning tone to her words, “I don’t want to talk about this now. It’s late.” 

“No,” Trixie says, a spark of an idea forming in her brain as she looks at the house listings on the table. “I want to talk about.”  
  
It's been a sore spot in their house for months now. They moved out here when Trixie was still in elementary school, when her mom had only just married her step-dad and he got a new job out here and uprooted them all from their home in the middle of nowhere Milwaukee to suburban Chicago. Trixie and her brother had both kicked up a fuss at the time but it's been years now, Trixie's lived in Chicago almost as long as they were in Milwaukee and she's settled here. But ever since the divorce her mom's been talking about moving back to Milwaukee, moving back closer to family and where she grew up. When her brother was still living with them they’d managed to fight it between the two of them, convince their mom to put off the move, but now that he’s moved across the state for college it’s harder to Trixie to keep up their argument on her own. Her sisters don’t care too much, too young to really understand the enormity of the idea. 

Trixie understands it all too well, what it would mean for them to move back to Wisconsin. She’s always been close to her mom, her only daughter for years and then her eldest daughter, the one who helped her the most when her sisters were small and her step-dad bailed. Her brother’s fine but Trixie’s never really gotten along all that well with the men in her life, doesn’t understand them the way she always seems to be able to with girls so easily, so there’s always been something of a disconnect between them; their shared desperation to stay in Chicago had been one of the few things that they were united on. Now he’s moved out and the only real effects it’s had on Trixie are that she got to move into his old room, and that she doesn’t have someone to have her back when her mom starts talking about Milwaukee again. 

Trixie gets why her mom wants to move back. Chicago’s always been less her home than theirs, too long spend in the Milwaukee countryside to be fully at home here, and when Trixie goes to college she’s going to be left alone with two young kids; they’ve never been rich but recently there’s been a few occasions where things have been a little too tight, bills have gone dangerously close to not getting paid, and things would certainly be cheaper in Milwaukee. So Trixie’s been begging her to put off the move just until after she graduates, just to let her finish high school here and then she can move wherever she wants and Trixie won’t complain. She doesn’t want to do her last semester in a new school, to have to leave her friends here. 

She doesn’t want to have to leave Katya. 

When her mom started to talk about moving sooner than she’d planned, that had been Trixie first thought, the main thing she’d worried about. She might not have known Katya all that long in the grand scheme of things, but she could never bear the thought of having to finish school without her best friend beside her. She already knows that next year is going to be struggle: Trixie still isn’t sure what she’s going to be doing, wants to apply to college but is still figuring out where and what she wants to do, knows that finding the money to make it work will be tight enough that she doesn’t want to rush into the wrong decision, end up somewhere she doesn’t want to be studying something she doesn’t care about, but Katya’s already all set to go back to Boston for college next year. It’s yet another reason Trixie’s been so determined to get her mom to agree to stay here until the end of the school year; things are already going to change. She doesn’t want the change to come earlier than she’d anticipated. 

Of course, all of that was before tonight. Now, Trixie thinks the idea she’s been fighting all this time could turn out to be her salvation. 

“I want to move,” she says, goes over to the table to stand next to her mom, looks at the papers spread out in front of her. 

“What?” her mom says, sounds totally taken aback by Trixie’s sudden one-eighty on the subject. 

“Yeah! I want to. Look at these places! I bet we could get a way nicer house there, right?” Trixie says, pulls the newspaper closer to her and taps at one of the houses her mom’s circled. 

“Trixie,” she says, wraps a gentle hand around Trixie’s wrist. Trixie resists the urge to snatch her hand back, reminded of the way Jinkx had grabbed onto it earlier. 

“What?” Trixie says, looks over at her. 

“Did you and Katya have a fight?” her mom asks. She has a knowing expression on her face that makes Trixie even more annoyed by the question. 

“No! I just wanted to come home, isn’t that okay? I live here!” she says. Her mom rolls her eyes, lets go of her wrist and gives her hand a pat. 

“Don’t be overdramatic. I was an eighteen year old once too, you know, I remember how bad it feels to fight with your best friend,” she tells her, sounds so infuriatingly superior about it that Trixie huffs out a frustrated breath. 

“We’re not fighting,” Trixie insists. Her mom pats her hand again and this time Trixie does pull it back, feels a little flicker of the stinging pain from earlier in the middle of her palm. She curls her fingers into it, presses her thumb into the pain to try to ease it, looks down at her hand mainly just to avoid looking at her mom. 

“Trixie,” her mom says, she’s soft but serious. She’s silent then and Trixie knows that she’s waiting for her, doesn’t want to give in but also knows that she’s always the more impatient one of the two of them so decides she’s too tired to test her. When she looks up at her mom she’s looking right into her eyes in a way that makes Trixie feel like she’s looking right into her soul, scrutinising her in a way that only her mom can. “Do you want to tell me something?” she asks calmly. 

It’s the last thing Trixie wants to hear. She takes a step back, feels her other hand ball into a fist of its own accord, nails digging into skin. 

“No,” she says, does her best to sound unfazed but the furrow in her mom’s brow says that she hasn’t quite managed it. 

“Are you sure?” she asks. 

“Can I go now? I’m tired,” Trixie says. She thinks maybe her mom’s going to ask for a real answer, ask her to sit down and talk to her properly, but instead she gives her a small smile and nods. 

“Okay. And call Katya back, okay? In the morning, though, not now – I know what you two are like, you’ll wake up the whole neighbourhood with your screeching if you call her now,” she says. 

This time Trixie can’t hold herself back from rolling her eyes. “Sure. Goodnight.” 

Trixie makes sure to stay quiet as she goes to her bedroom, avoids the floorboards that creak when she goes into the bathroom to brush her teeth. She studiously avoids the flashing light on her phone’s answering machine where it sits in the corner of her room, next to the small stack of cushions she keeps there for their long phone conversations. 

Trixie has no idea when their next one will be. If she even wants to happen anymore. 

The whole evening feels like a jumbled mess in her brain. One minute everything was fine: she was at the party, talking to Max and wondering where Katya had disappeared, and then the next minute, Pearl and Violet and their friends were there and— 

Trixie doesn’t want to dwell on it. 

Still, she knows she won’t be able to fall asleep without knowing what Katya’s messages say, so she goes over to the machine and hits play. 

 _“Trixie.”_ Katya sounds upset, her voice breathier than usual, and it makes Trixie’s stomach clench uncomfortably. “ _Can you call me back when you get home? I’m sorry if I upset you. I...Please, just call me back, okay?”_  

The machine beeps. 

 _“Trixie_. _”_ Katya’s voice sounds stronger now and Trixie presses her fingertips together under her chin, can feel the backs of her calves cramping a little at the way she’s crouched over the machine. “ _Trixie, that was a really shitty thing to do, you know that, don’t you?  Don't you, Trix? Just...can you call me back so we can talk about this?”_  

Beep. 

 _“Trixie. Trixie, it can’t have taken you this long to drive home. Can you please just call me? This is so stupid, I’m not fighting with you about this, I—”_  

Trixie skips to the next message. 

 _“Can you please just tell me you got home? I don’t want to have to deal with your mom if you got into some kind of accident the one time you drove home in the dark by yourself.”_ Katya sounds like she’s trying to force the humour into her voice in a way that sounds almost desperate. Trixie bites the inside of her cheek. 

_“Trixie—”_

Beep.

 _“Please, Trixie—”_  

Beep. 

 _“Trixie, hey. It’s Pearl.”_  

Trixie almost misses Pearl’s message by accident, her eyes squeezed shut and finger poised over the button. She looks up at the sound of Pearl’s voice in surprise, manages to stop herself skipping past it. 

 _“I just wanted to call you after what happened at Alaska’s,”_ Pearl says and Trixie winces, _“it wasn’t...anyway. Some of the girls are going to come over on Monday...that’s the 23rd, I guess. If you wanted to come over, that’d be cool. Call me back.”_  

Trixie stares at the machine. She’s barely spoken to Pearl in years and tonight of all nights she certainly wasn’t expecting to hear from her, let alone to be invited to something that sounds suspiciously like a party. ‘Some of the girls’ has to mean Violet and their other friends, and Trixie can feel her eyes widen a little as she imagines what could come of a night like that going well. She could be _in_ , could ride out the last semester of school with the cool girls. And Katya— 

Well. It doesn’t matter about Katya now. 

Trixie’s startled out of her thoughts by the phone ringing right in front of. It’s so loud in the silence of the night and she fumbles for it quickly, trying to silence it before it causes too much noise. She’s going to cut it straight off but realises it might be Pearl, so she lifts the receiver to her ear instead.

“Trixie?”

Trixie slams the phone back down.

“Now you know that I got home,” she whispers, stands up and goes to shut off the light. “Maybe you’ll stop calling now.”

Katya sounded like she’d been crying. Trixie tries not to think about that too hard.

 

***

 

As Trixie’s drifting off to sleep her palm tingles, just irritating enough to get her attention. With everything that happened once she got home she’d all but forgotten her weird interaction with Jinkx at the gas station, which probably says a lot about how eventful the night’s been if that’s what’s been pushed to the back of her mind. 

 _"You have a big decision to make, don’t you?"_ she’d said. 

Trixie has no idea what kind of decision she was talking about. 

 _“I hope you make the right one_.”

 

***

 

When Trixie wakes up, the first thing she registers is that she’s exhausted. The second is that her bed feels too big: her leg isn’t dangling off the edge like it usually is by the time she’s moved around in the night, trying to stretch out across a mattress that doesn’t quite have enough space for her to starfish across it comfortably.

The third is that someone is shaking her arm, hard.

“No,” she moans, tries to pull the covers over her head. It feels like her sisters are tiny again, like she’s gone back to when they’d rush into her room in the morning and drag her out of bed to pay attention to them. This morning she doesn’t have any energy to pay attention to anyone, she’s too tired after the night she had. 

The hand doesn’t stop shaking her and she turns away, twists the blankets over herself. Her mattress feels strange, feels like it dips a little towards the middle as she turns. 

“Mommy,” says a small voice, high-pitched but indignant. “Mommy, it’s time to wake up.” 

“What,” Trixie mumbles, trying to make sense of the words. The hand on her arm squeezes, the mattress dips a little more and then she gasps in pain as small knees dig into her ribs. 

“Mommy! You’re being silly,” says the voice again. A small finger digs into Trixie’s cheek. Trixie opens her eyes and is faced with a pair of narrowed blue ones glaring at her. 

“What the fuck,” Trixie says. The blue eyes widen. 

“That’s a bad word,” the girl in front of her whispers in awe. She’s still kneeling over Trixie, bony knees pressing against her stomach uncomfortably now. 

After a second, Trixie relaxes. _It’s just a dream_ , she thinks to herself, reaches up to push her hair behind her ear where it's hanging over her face, a little tangled after a night's sleep. _Just a dream_. 

“Um. Sorry?” she says. The girls considers her for a moment, then giggles and stands up, one foot planted on Trixie’s thigh. She isn’t big, Trixie wouldn’t guess that she’s older than four or five, but she’s got enough of her weight pressing on one spot that it makes Trixie sit up, try to dislodge her without knocking her over. Unbothered, the girl jumps to the ground beside the bed and looks at Trixie expectantly. 

“It’s okay,” she says solemnly, “but it’s almost breakfast. No more sleeping now.” 

“Right. No more sleeping,” Trixie agrees. 

It isn’t the weirdest dream she’s ever had, but it’s still a little disconcerting in how real everything feels. When she swings her legs out of bed and stands up she realises it’s freezing cold. The girl takes one of the blankets off of the bed and wraps it around her shoulders like a cape, deftly drapes its ends over her arm so she doesn’t trip in a way that looks so effortless that it must come from a lot of practice. She walks to the doorway and turns the corner – then reappears a second later.

“Come on!” she says imperiously, beckons for Trixie to follow her. “You’re so sleepy, Mommy.” 

“I guess I am,” Trixie murmurs to herself. When she goes to follow her out of the room she knocks her knee against the corner of the bedframe, realises how narrow the room is. “Son of a bitch!” she hisses, brings her knee and rubs at its side. 

“You said another bad word!” the girl calls back from the hallway. Trixie doesn’t bother to apologise for that one, just waits for the worst of the pain to subside before finally making it out of the door. 

It’s funny: she can’t remember the last time she felt physical pain like that in a dream. Or the last time she realised she was dreaming so quickly. 

The house they’re in reminds her of the house she grew up in Milwaukee, small and homey; when she looks out of the window in the hallway she can see green fields stretching out into the horizon. 

She follows the girl into a small kitchen, and when they get there she spins around, looks at Trixie with small hands planted on her hips. 

“You’re being weird,” she announces. 

“Okay,” Trixie says, not sure what to say to defend herself. 

The girl is blonde, like her, but beyond that she can’t see a whole lot of similarities despite the fact that she’s been calling Trixie ‘mommy’. She’s cute, with chubby cheeks and a small, straight nose, big, pale blue eyes and curls that look like a nightmare to pull a brush through. 

“Mommy,” she says, sounds more unimpressed than a small child has the right to. 

“What?” Trixie replies. She can’t help but smile, just a little: the combination of an indignant expression on a little face that chubby just results in an adorable pout that she can’t take seriously. 

Somewhere beyond the kitchen there’s the sound of a door opening. The girl’s face lights up and she runs past Trixie, disappearing out of sight as the sound of barking fills the air. 

“Okay,” Trixie murmurs to herself, “time to wake up now.” 

This is what comes of such a strange night, she thinks. She doesn’t have time for an even stranger dream. 

Trixie pinches the inside of her arm. 

Pinches it again. Hard. 

Nothing happens. 

“What the fuck,” she whispers, stares down at the red mark on her skin, “is going on?” 

“Hey!” a familiar voice says in the distance. “I didn’t know if you two sleepyheads would be awake yet.” 

Katya. 

Trixie breathes a sigh of relief. No matter what happened last night, she’s relieved that she’s here now. If anyone can make sense of situation that seems totally crazy, it’s Katya. 

“Mommy’s being weird,” she hears the girl say, tone serious again. “She keeps saying bad words.” 

“Well, Mommy hasn’t had her coffee yet. Cut her some slack, huh?” Katya says, her voice getting louder as she appears in the kitchen doorway with the girl on her hip, grocery bag over one forearm and a cup holder with two takeaway cups in her free hand. 

Trixie stares at her. It’s Katya but...not _her_ Katya. It can’t be. This Katya is older, seems a little taller, maybe, her hair’s lighter, shorter. She has bangs. Trixie can’t count the amount of time she’s talked Katya out of cutting in bangs for herself, but they look good. 

Katya looks really good. Happy, Trixie thinks, and when she looks at Trixie her smile widens, eyes seem to get brighter. 

“Good morning,” she says, as if nothing out of the ordinary is happening. As if it’s just a normal morning.

Trixie’s starting to feel seriously freaked out.

“Katya,” she says, takes a hesitant step towards her. “Katya, I…” She lets her words trail off, suddenly unsure of what to say. 

“I know, Stevie already ratted you out,” Katya says, still grinning at her. “What did you say?”

“So many bad words,” Stevie says solemnly before Trixie can even think about answering, eyes wide as she looks between the two of them. Katya snorts with laughter, sets her down on her feet and ruffles her already messy curls.

“Put these on the table, please,” she tells Stevie, hands her the grocery bag. 

“Breakfast!” Stevie breathes, full of excitement again and apparently already over the temporary upset Trixie’s cursing caused. 

“Your daughter’s a snitch,” Katya says to Trixie once Stevie’s busy emptying the bag onto the kitchen table, leaning up on her tiptoes to reach its surface. Katya’s expression is completely deadpan as she watches Trixie, and Trixie realises she’s waiting for a response.

“Uh,” she says. Katya stares at her for a second longer before bursting out laughing.

“You really aren’t with it this morning, are you?” she says, but Trixie can’t miss the fondness in her words as she steps towards her.

And then— 

And then Katya kisses her.

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Thursday December 21 2017_.
> 
> The phone slips out of Trixie's hands. It hits the floor with a smashing sound but Trixie doesn't really register it, finds herself stuck frozen on the spot. 
> 
> 2017\. _2017_.
> 
> How is it 2017? It's 2002, Trixie knows it is because how could she not? Of course she knows what year it is, she's not totally insane. 
> 
> Or at least, she would have said she wasn't up until now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello! thank you so so much to everyone who sent me such wonderful, thoughtful, kind feedback for the first chapter of this -- i was so incredibly anxious about sharing this fic and you're all sweet angels for reassuring me. i hope you enjoy this next part! featuring more silly christmas magic, the benefits of being a witch, and lots of confusion. 
> 
> thanks as always to my beautiful support system, [matilda_queen](http://archiveofourown.org/users/matilda_queen), [djoodigarland](http://archiveofourown.org/users/djoodigarland) and [DahliasForKatya](http://archiveofourown.org/users/dahliasforkatya), you're all so amazing and i love you. 
> 
> come say hi @[crackerdyke](http://www.crackerdyke.tumblr.com) on tumblr if you'd like to, and please drop a comment at the end if you like what you read! <3

Trixie can feel Katya smiling against her lips. She doesn't move, feels totally frozen in the moment and eventually Katya pulls back, gives Trixie's arm a little squeeze.

"Is everything okay?" she asks. She's looking at Trixie in concern, hand still on her arm.

"What's going on?" Trixie whispers. She wants to believe it's all still a dream, but everything seems scarily real: the gentle grip of Katya's hand on her arm, the cold floor against her feet, the way her heart's pounding in her chest.

"...Breakfast?" Katya says, cocks her head a little. Now her expression reads like she's worried Trixie's gone insane, and Trixie wonders if she's right.

"I -- this isn't right. I'm not supposed to be here," she says. Katya's frowning now, the lines on her forehead that Trixie's only noticed on a few occasions before seem deeper than they've ever looked before.

"Where else are you supposed to be?" Katya asks slowly.

Trixie can feel her mouth moving, opening and closing but no words are coming out. She has no idea what to say, knows that it'll sound totally crazy to say that this isn't her life, that she's pretty sure this all some weirdly realistic dream.

"Can we put my Stevie music on?" Stevie asks, breaks the silence from where she's climbing onto a chair at the table. There are two dogs roaming around the small kitchen now too; Trixie hadn't taken them in before. One, a little smaller than the other with sleek red fur, wanders out of the kitchen doorway while the other, tan with shaggier fur that looks matted in some places, is hovering around Stevie's chair, tail wagging.

Katya's still looking at Trixie intently, and Trixie wonders if she's waiting for her to answer Stevie's question. She would try, if only she had any idea what she's asking for.

"Uhh," she says, unable to think of anything coherent to say. Katya's eyes narrow a little, expression even more concerned. She finally looks away, evens her face out again to look at Stevie.

"Sure, baby. We can listen to it," she agrees. Her hand on Trixie's bicep squeezes lightly again, just for a second, then runs down the length of her arm all the way to her wrist before she lets go. "Drink your coffee and eat something, okay?" she says to Trixie, her tone soft but definitely worried. Trixie just nods, doesn't trust her voice at this point.

Everything feels so surreal. Trixie walks over to the table on legs that feel unsteady, and behind her she hears music start playing: it's quiet, the volume low, but she's familiar enough with it to recognise it from the first note.

_Now here you go again, you say you want your freedom..._

Trixie feels like the universe is conspiring to drive her insane by way of Stevie Nicks.

Stevie -- this Stevie, Stevie who's sitting across from her at the table and eyeing Trixie suspiciously -- lights up at the sound of the music.

"Stevie music is the best music," she says, beams at Katya when she sits down between them at the table.

 _Well_ , Trixie thinks, _at least the dream kid has good taste in music_.

There's a buzzing noise coming from the other side of the kitchen as Trixie considers the drink in front of her. Her heart's still beating fast in her chest, she feels a little like she's running on adrenaline and she isn't quite sure if coffee's the best thing to drink right now. But she can feel Katya's eyes on her and even if she still has no idea what's going on the easiest thing to do right now seems to be to go along with whatever it is, try to see it through in the hopes that she can wake up, or get back to normal however that's going to work, as quickly as she can. So she takes a tentative sip, is relieved to find that it tastes pretty good, even feels like it calms her stomach a little bit.

"Trixie," Katya says. Trixie looks over at her in surprise.

"What?"

"Your phone," she says, gestures over to the kitchen cabinets where the buzzing noise is coming from.

"What?" Trixie says again.

"It's not mine, it's plugged into the speakers. It must be yours," Katya says. Trixie looks at her helplessly and Katya raises an eyebrow. "It sounds like someone's calling you?" she says, sounds uncertain but more like she's wondering what the hell is wrong with Trixie.

"Oh. Right. My phone," Trixie says slowly. She hesitates for another moment, Katya watching her closely all the while, then gets up from her chair.

"I think Dale Cooper wants to share my breakfast," Stevie says thoughtfully, apparently unaware in the moment that anything strange is going on.

"Dale Cooper does not need your breakfast," Katya says firmly. There's a whining noise and Trixie looks around to see Dale Cooper's paws are propped up on Stevie's leg now, almost as tall as her where she's sitting in her chair.

"Just a little bit," Stevie reasons, and Katya grabs her hand before she can start feeding the dog from the table.

Trixie turns back to face the counter, mind racing. Really, half of what's so crazy about the whole situation is how mundane it is. If her brain wanted to come up with some dream world where she somehow ended up with Katya, she thinks it could have at least produced something a little more exciting than living such a small, ordinary life.

There's a small set of speakers set on the kitchen counter, Fleetwood Mac still filtering out of them quietly. They look fancier than the stereo Trixie has at home, and set into them is something that looks like some kind of futuristic cell phone. No one in Trixie's family has one, she's only really seen a few of the rich kids at school with them but apparently they have more than one, given there's an identical phone on the counter next to the speakers. Sure enough it's vibrating urgently, and Trixie goes to pick it up.

"Who’s calling you?” Katya asks from the table. Trixie doesn't reply: when she picks up the phone the screen lights up.

_Thursday December 21 2017._

The phone slips out of Trixie's hands. It hits the floor with a smashing sound but Trixie doesn't really register it, finds herself stuck frozen on the spot.

2017\. _2017_.

How is it 2017? It's 2002, Trixie knows it is because how could she not? Of course she knows what year it is, she's not totally insane.

Or at least, she would have said she wasn't up until now.

There's a scrape of chair legs against the floor behind her.

"Trixie? What happened, are you okay?" Katya asks.

"I..." Trixie trails off. She feels dizzy, reaches out to brace herself against the edge of the counter with one hand. Katya crouches down beside her, picks up the phone and straightens back up.

"What happened?" she asks again, "Did you just drop it?"

"I guess so," Trixie mumbles. She glances at the phone for just long enough to see that the glass screen is cracked, jagged lines cutting through it at all angles. But then she's looking at Katya, trying to take her in a little more thoroughly than she did before.

In 2017, she should be thirty three. Trixie peers at Katya: the little wrinkles across her brow, furrowed deep now thanks to the worried expression on her face. The few little gray hairs at her temple, almost completely blended in with the pale blonde colour the rest of it is dyed.

Katya looks about right for thirty three. She looks about right for how Trixie could imagine she might end up by 2017.

But 2017 is _fifteen years in the future_.

"I think it still works," Katya says. Trixie looks back down at the phone, sees the screen lit up underneath the smashed screen: the date's right in front of her again.

_Thursday December 21 2017._

Trixie stares at it until the screen goes black again.

"I think Mommy did something silly," Stevie whispers loudly behind them. Then, "Oh no! Dale Cooper ate my breakfast even though you said I couldn't share it!"

"What is wrong with everyone this morning?" Katya says beside her. Trixie glances over to see the exasperated expression on her face, the purse of her lips.

It's 2017. Trixie's in _2017_.

She pinches her arm hard again.

"What are you doing?" Katya asks, sounds confused and bordering on horrified.

"Just in case I'm dreaming," Trixie replies. She can hear the dazed tone to her own voice but doesn't think there's much she can do about it at this point.

"Oh, come on. It's not the end of the world, it's just the screen. I think the phone's still okay, see?" Katya says, holds the phone out in front Trixie.

Trixie doesn't bother to try to correct her, can't think how she would try to explain herself anyway. She takes the phone once she realises Katya's not going to let her refuse it, holds it carefully in both hands this time.

"Can you unlock it?" Katya asks her. Trixie looks between her and the phone in her hands, considers the broken screen.

"Uhhh," she says, tries her best to stall.

"Does your fingerprint still work?" Katya asks, points to the circle just under the screen that Trixie realises must be a button; it has a crack running almost exactly diagonally through it.

"My fingerprint?" Trixie murmurs, lets her index finger hover over it for a second before pressing down gingerly.

Nothing happens.

"Okay. I guess you can still use your passcode?" Katya says.

"And that is...?" Trixie replies. Katya raises an eyebrow at her and she shrugs, hopes she can bluff through it again. Thankfully Katya takes the phone from her hands and swipes across the screen, types in a code when numbers appear, too fast for Trixie to follow the pattern.

"Stevie's birthday," Katya supplies, hands it back to her.

"Oh, right. Of course," Trixie agrees.

"My real birthday," Stevie says from the table, "not my fake birthday."

"Why would it be your fake one?" Katya asks, finally leaves Trixie's side to return to the table. Trixie's grateful for the space, still feels like her chest is constricted too tightly to even fully catch her breath.

"Sometimes it is," Stevie says. "Mama, don't you think we should give Reba extra breakfast too since Dale Cooper had mine?"

"Absolutely not," Katya replies immediately, "don't even think about it."

Trixie sets the phone down on the kitchen counter ever so carefully, then braces herself against it with the heels of her hands. She closes her eyes, tries to breath in as deep and slow as she manage.

“Trix, it’s fine,” Katya says, Trixie just squeezes her eyes shut tighter. “It’s just a phone, don’t stress yourself out over it. It still works, it’ll be fine; these things happen.”

“Like Dale Cooper eating my breakfast,” Stevie says wisely.

“Right. Yeah,” Trixie says vaguely. She keeps her eyes shut for a moment longer, hopes desperately that when she opens them she’ll be back in her own bed, in her own life.

Trixie opens her eyes. She’s still in the kitchen.

“I think I’m going to take a shower,” she says after a few seconds of reaching for something that’ll get her away from everyone, give her some space to freak out properly.

“Okay,” Katya says. When Trixie finally turns around again she sees that Katya’s watching her warily, can obviously tell that something’s wrong.  

Trixie doesn't try to offer any further explanation before escaping out of the kitchen, and it isn't until she's left that she realises she doesn't have any idea where the bathroom is. She isn't about to go back and ask where the bathroom is -- mainly because she knows how crazy it'll sound, given that no one else seems to realise that something incredibly weird is going on and Trixie is somehow fifteen years in the future -- but after a second panicking she realises it shouldn't be too hard to find it. It doesn't seem like a particularly big house, so surely she can find the right room just by trial and error, as long as no one finds her opening all of the doors along her way.

The first door she opens doesn't lead her to a bathroom but a small bedroom instead, even smaller than the one she woke up in. The curtains are still pulled across the windows but there's enough light coming through them for her to make out a twin bed in the corner, two bookshelves against the wall by its foot. There are stones lining the shelves in front of rows of books and it takes Trixie a second to realise they look like crystals. The curtains, like the walls, are a soft pink and one side is singed in the bottom corner; Trixie spots a few candles clustered together on one of the shelves, far away from the windowsill.

There isn't much else in the way of furniture on the other side of the room, hardly enough space to fit anything else in either, but the pale wall is almost completely covered in paintings, decorated from corner to corner. It doesn't Trixie more than a moment to recognise the style of the lines, the colours: it all looks exactly like the drawings she's seen in Katya's notebooks, the paintings she's done that are hanging on her walls in her bedroom at her house. It's all different pieces across the wall and some look fresher than others: the ones that seem to be the most recent are lower down on the wall; the designs aren't any different the rest of them, but the colours haven't been filled in quite so neatly, dipping in and out of the lines here and there. Trixie finds herself with the image of Katya -- this Katya, adult Katya, future Katya -- helping Stevie paint her own walls, letting her do all the bright colours even though it won't look as good as the rest of them.

It seems about right for Katya, really.

Trixie swallows hard at that thought and ducks back out of the room.

The next door along leads her into the room she woke up in. Trixie can hear movement in the kitchen and decides she'd better move quickly. She goes to the dresser against the wall and opens it up, is faced with a drawer full of clothes she'd never wear: lots of red and dark colours, absurd and clashing patterns. For a moment she's worried that in whatever weird reality she's wound up in this version of Trixie Mattel is so completely different from herself that their taste in clothing isn't even the same, but when she opens up the next drawer down she finds a reassuring array of pastels and florals, a few things in plaid just to balance things out. Everything seems fairly worn and inexpensive, not really all that different from her own wardrobe. Trixie picks something out quickly and thankfully finds that the last door at the end of the hallway is the bathroom, breathes a sigh of relief when she clicks the lock into place.

Trixie leans back against the door, closes her eyes. She's trying desperately to cling onto the idea that this could all be a dream but it's feeling like a less and less likely possibility as time goes by. She doesn't normally realise she's dreaming, doesn't tend to have wild and imaginative lucid dreams like the ones Katya tells her about sometimes. It doesn't feel like a dream anymore, but that doesn't put her any closer to figuring out what the hell is going on.

The bathroom is small and uninteresting, the shower set over the tub in the corner of the room. It takes her a minute or two to figure out how it works, to stop cold water trickling out of the showerhead, and once she does manage to get it going there's a small spray of water coming away from the main stream that she can't seem to stop no matter how she moves it. Eventually she gives up trying, steps back from the shower to take off the unfamiliar pyjamas she has on. Before she can get the clothes off she catches sight of herself in the mirror above the sink and freezes.

Somehow, even though Trixie had been taken aback by seeing what Katya looks like, she hadn't even thought for a second that her reflection might not be her own.

The weirdest part of it is that it is, it is her, she can see herself in the face in front of her, but she doesn't look the same.

She looks older, sure, is a little alarmed by the little lines forming around her mouth and the corners of her eyes, but it's still her. She looks a little tired, presses the pads of her fingers against the bags under her eyes -- but then that's not all that different to how she feels most days, so that's hardly shocking.

She looks like her mom.

Trixie stares at herself in the mirror until the steam from the hot water running out of the shower head fogs it up so much that she can't see her reflection anymore, her face nothing more than a blur she can pretend is her own normal appearance.

She looks down at her hands instead of her face: a few lines, her skin's a tiny bit drier but nothing's drastically different.

The rest of her feels pretty different, and it's weird to realise that she's only noticed it now that she's seen herself. Trixie tips her head back once she's under the water, runs her fingers through her hair now that it's wet. It's longer than she's ever had it, feels thicker than she's used to. Everything's changed, just a little, just enough to mark the time that should have passed: her hips feel a little wider, her stomach and her thighs a little thicker with new stretch marks to show for the changes.

Trixie feels like she's going totally insane.

She isn't sure how long she stands under the hot water, turned up high enough once she'd figured out how to, but it's long enough to feel the skin at the back of her shoulders prickle a little with the heat, feel water start to pool around her feet in the bottom of the tub. Long enough that Trixie realises things aren't going to snap back to normal just because she closes her eyes and wishes for it.

So she lets herself sink down to sit in the tub, draws her knees up and wraps her arms around them, tries to catch her breath.

This life doesn't make any sense for Katya, either -- more so than Trixie, really. Maybe Trixie never imagined herself in this kind of life this early but she wanted to end up here some day, likes to imagine that she'll find someone she'll want to marry and she'll have a nice house; sometimes she lets herself imagine a hazy image of a child, even if it's something she's doubted for a long time that she'll ever get.

Katya's never seemed to want any of those things. The plans she tells Trixie about involve travelling the world, learning five more languages and finding out about new cultures, never settling down in one place for too long. Trixie makes fun of her for fulfilling the flighty artist stereotype but she isn't wrong.

Trixie has dreams and ambitions, she wants to make music and write and do comedy and do all of those things simultaneously, but she's also realistic and knows how unlikely it is that she could make any of those things work even if she tries hard; it's part of why she can't make up her mind about what to do once she graduates, doesn't know which path seems the best to follow. Katya wants to make art and follow her passions, doesn't let herself be limited by reality in the same way Trixie does. She talks about fate and letting things just happen, begs Trixie to let her practice reading her tarot cards with her and waxes lyrical about having faith in the universe’s plan for them when Trixie starts worrying about to do once school’s finished for good. It drives Trixie crazy sometimes that she can be content to believe that things may already be laid out for her, that she wouldn’t mind it if they were.

Trixie doesn't want to leave anything up to fate. Trixie wants control of her own life, wants to decide her own future and reap the benefits of her hard work. Katya wants to see what happens and wring as much enjoyment and beauty out of life as she can; she’s almost the polar opposite to Trixie in that sense. Seeing her here in this kind of life seems so wrong on so many levels -- and the most jarring part of it is how happy she seems.

Trixie looks down at her hands again, splays her fingers out across her knees. There's a ring on her left hand. Presumably a wedding ring, except it's not like two women can get married. She wonders if they're just for show, a token rather than anything official, then realises she doesn’t know why she’s wondering about the details when the whole thing is so totally crazy anyway. Katya's her best friend, not -- not anything else. Will never be anything else.

Someone bangs on the outside of the bathroom door and Trixie jolts at the shock of it.

"Trixie? Did you fall asleep in the shower again?"

"What?" Trixie says, surprised, then shakes her head and decides not to try to question it. "Sorry. I'll be out soon!"

She doesn't get a response, but realises she can't hide away in the shower forever. She reaches for one of the shampoos set on the side of the tub, chooses the generic bottle over the small fancy one that has something to do with white sage. The water starts to run cold by the time she's done and Trixie's shivering as she steps out of the tub. Water's pooled on the tiled floor in the corner where she couldn't stop some of the shower spray escaping through the curtain, and once she's towelled off and dressed in the clothes she found she puts her towel down to try to soak up the worst of it.

Everything feels so ridiculously, hilariously mundane that she catches herself almost forgetting what's going on. Then she steps out into the hallway and is met with the sound of Fleetwood Mac still playing in the kitchen, louder now, footsteps rushing around and dogs barking. Trixie ducks into the bedroom to escape the noise but freezes in the doorway when she finds Katya is sitting on the edge of the bed.

"Hey," Katya starts, then stops, furrows her brow, squints at her. "Why did you get dressed in the bathroom?"

"Um..." Trixie glances down at herself and back up at Katya, trails off when she realises she has no idea how to answer.

"Is something going on? You've been acting weird all morning," Katya says. She looks genuinely concerned and pats the spot on the bed beside her; Trixie hesitates before sitting down.

"I'm fine," she says, presses her palms against her thighs and runs them towards her knees, keeps her eyes cast downwards to avoid having to look at Katya.

"You don't seem fine," Katya insists, "you seem like something's happened."

 _Something has happened_ , Trixie wants to say, _I’m not supposed to be here, I think I've lost my mind and I can't say anything without sounding totally crazy._

"Nothing's happened," she says instead, tries to sound calm and placating.

"Are you sure?” Katya asks.

“I couldn’t get the shower to stop leaking out of the side of the tub,” Trixie says, reaching desperately for something that can take the conversation in a different direction.

“What?” Katya says, seems baffled.

“Yeah, it wouldn’t stop leaking,” Trixie says, feels relieved for half a second before Katya lets out a huff of bemused laughter.

“What’s new? It’s done that since we moved in,” she says with a shrug. “You’ve never noticed it before?”

“It’s always done that?” Trixie repeats, can feel the way her lips are pulled down at the corners in horror.

“Sure. I mean, it’s not really a big deal, right? It’s never gone through the floor,” Katya says. She’s squinting at Trixie again. “What’s got you so worked up about it today?”

“Why wouldn’t you -- why wouldn’t _we_ ever try to fix it?” Trixie asks.

“Trixie,” Katya says, gentle firmness to her words. She pulls one leg up and tucks it underneath her, shifts closer to Trixie. There’s a warm touch at the base of her spine and Trixie realises Katya’s hand is splayed out against it, palm pressing against her skin through the fabric of her dress.

Trixie surges away, stumbles to her feet in her desperation to get some distance between them.

“Trixie?” Katya says again and now she sounds more alarmed than curious.

“I’m fine!” Trixie says pre-emptively.

“What the hell is going on with you? Can you please just talk to me?” Katya asks. Her arms are folded across her chest and there’s hurt mixed in with the concern in her expression now.

“There’s nothing going on with me!” Trixie’s head is spinning and she wants out. She didn’t sign up for this, never asked to get stuck in some world where she a broken shower and a kid and a -- a Katya.

“You know,” Katya says, sounds almost calm and conversational even as she moves to stand in front of Trixie, “getting louder every time you say that doesn’t make it any more convincing.”

“Doesn’t mean you have to keep asking me,” Trixie says through gritted teeth.

“It does when there’s clearly something going on!” Katya sounds exasperated now; when she reaches out to touch Trixie’s elbow Trixie yanks it back, watches confusion flash across Katya’s face.

“I -- I can’t -- I need—” Trixie can’t get the words out, feels her fingernails digging into her palms in a detached way, not really pain just pressure on her skin.

“Trixie—”

“No,” Trixie says, cuts her off before she can ask the same question for the hundredth time.

“Trixie!”

Trixie turns and runs.

She almost turns the wrong way in the hallway, spins back around when she realises she’s facing the door to the bathroom. She sweeps through the kitchen, can hear Katya following her, doesn’t want to look back and risk losing her chance at getting away.

“Where are you going?”

Trixie had all but forgotten about Stevie, but now her voice breaks through the static in her head. Her high voice sounds confused, not quite scared. When Trixie glances over she sees Stevie watching her with wide eyes, wild curls a mess around her shoulders and her hands grasping at the material of her own pyjama shirt.

Trixie feels like a small child again, watching her father go for the last time -- except everything’s in reverse. She’d never imagined that she could end up on the other side of things, even if it’s just in some kind of warped future she’s managed to dream up.

“Out,” she says, stopping in the hallway by the front door only to snatch up a set of keys she spots on a high side table. “I’ll be back,” she adds. Has no idea if that’s the truth or not.

“Trixie.”

Trixie ignores Katya’s voice one last time before she leaves.

 

***

 

The keys Trixie picked up on her way turn out to be for a car sitting out front that looks like it’s seen better days: when she unlocks it and throws herself into the passenger seat it takes a long few seconds for the engine to chug to life, while a few of the warning lights on the dashboard seem to stay lit a little longer than they should. It’s not dissimilar to her own car in that sense, she’s all too used to putting the key in the ignition and hoping for the best.

Trixie doesn’t let herself look in the rearview mirror as she navigates the car out of the driveway.

It’s a little easier to breathe as she gets further away from the house. She thinks she was right about where they are: the roads aren’t quite exactly the same as the ones she remembers from her childhood, but they’re similar enough that she’d bet all the money in her wallet that she’s not that far from the home she grew up in. It’s another confusing piece in a puzzle she can’t fit together, can’t figure out what she’s supposed to make from the parts she’s been given. Katya isn’t supposed to end up in a place like this, she’s supposed to be living some wild artist’s life in a city whose name Trixie can’t pronounce, calling Trixie whenever she remembers to and telling her about the adventures she’s having.

She’s not supposed to be with Trixie. And Trixie isn’t supposed to be with her.

Trixie tries to focus on the road signs instead of letting her thoughts run away with her. She recognises half of the town names listed on the boards, finds herself taking the turns towards the ones that sound the most familiar. She didn’t bring anything with her, doesn’t have a phone or any money, nothing except the car and the clothes she’s wearing, but she doesn’t let herself worry about what her plan is.

According to the clock on the car dashboard it takes her less than an hour to reach her old neighbourhood. There are a few wrong turns along the way but then she’s sitting in the car on the dirt track that leads down to the house she grew up. She doesn’t drive right up to it, sits just close enough that she can see the front of the house. She can just about make out a wreath on the front door, a string of unlit lights around the line of the roof.

“What the fuck am I doing here?” she whispers to herself. She has the heat blasting and her palms feel a little sweaty against the steering wheel. She grips it tight even though the car’s not moving, lets her head drop until her forehead’s pressed against the top of the wheel.

She wants to go home. She wants her own home, her real home, her room and her bed. She wants her mom.

Trixie bites her lip hard, feels the burn at the back of her eyes. She has no idea where her mom is, if she could call her or speak to her. Is she even talking to her mom? In whatever world she’s in now this Trixie is living with a woman -- does her mom hate her?

“I’m not gay,” Trixie whispers to herself, fights to get the words out around the lump in her throat. “I’m not supposed to be here.”

She doesn’t know where she’s supposed to be. It feels like she’s stuck in a nightmare with no way to get home. She’s so tired, her brain hurts from all of the confusion.

She remembers her mom telling her a story once about a friend of a friend who’d gone through some kind of real midlife crisis: woken up one morning and decided she’d had enough of her life, become absolutely resolute in her determination to leave and start anew. Trixie wonders feverishly if something similar to what’s happening now had happened to her -- maybe Trixie’s not the only person who’s ever woken up with no idea about the life she’s apparently living? Or maybe she had some kind of stroke and didn’t realise, hit her head and has managed to forget everything that’s happened between what feels like yesterday and now.

Except that none of those ideas are even remotely reassuring. If any of them are true then it means Trixie still doesn’t understand how she came to be living this life, how things can have changed so drastically that everything she wanted is apparently different now. A lot can change in fifteen years -- _fifteen years,_ Trixie can’t believe she’s actually entertaining the idea that all of this could be real -- but surely not _this_ much.

Trixie’s stomach rumbles. Apparently, just because her brain is too caught up in all of the madness to think about anything else it doesn’t mean that the rest of her body feels the same way. She didn’t eat anything at breakfast, barely had two mouthfuls of her coffee (there’s a headache pounding behind her temples but she’s more inclined to attribute that to the whirlwind nightmare she’s trapped in rather than some pseudo-caffeine dependency she might be neglecting), and suddenly she realises that she’s so hungry it’s physically painful.

Now she wishes she’d stopped to find a wallet.

She’s going to have to go back to the house, she thinks -- except that she has no idea where that is. She followed any road signs she saw on her way to guide her here but she didn’t take in anything about where she was coming from, doubts she can navigate her way back just by trying to retrace her steps.

Trixie’s absolutely screwed. She rummages around the car, looking for any change that might be lying around or a map that she might be able to use to try to figure out the route she took to get here. She hits the jackpot when she opens the glove compartment and a stack of CDs spill out into the passenger footwell. Trixie sighs, goes to pack the CDs back into the compartment but then spots a GPS tucked into the back corner.

“Please work, please work, c’mon, please work,” she murmurs, holding down the power button. She’s never used one before, they don’t have one at home but her mom had borrowed one from a friend one time a few years back when they’d driven to Milwaukee from Chicago to visit her family over the holidays. It hadn’t seemed too complicated back then, and Trixie hopes she can figure out how to use this one to guide her back the way she came.

The GPS takes a little while to power up, sits on a loading screen for a minute or so and Trixie gathers up the scattered CDs to stop herself watching it. It doesn’t seem like her music tastes have changed all that much: there’s Dolly and Joni Mitchell, Ani DiFranco and -- of course -- Stevie Nicks and Fleetwood Mac. She puts those on the bottom of the pile, shoves the rest on top and jams the glove compartment closed again before checking the GPS. It doesn’t seem like it’s been used in a while, and one of the last addresses that shows up is listed under ‘Home’. Trixie pulls it up: it’s an address about forty minutes away, which makes sense given the time she wasted getting here on wrong turns and following any sign that looked even a tiny bit familiar.

The GPS is easy enough to follow and the drive back is much quicker this time. She kind of wishes it were longer, that she had a little more time to herself before she has to face the music.

When Trixie pulls up outside the house she can see two faces at the kitchen window. Stevie’s nose is pressed directly against the glass, breath fogging it up, and it looks like Dale Cooper is sitting beside her, helping to keep watch. Trixie’s stomach tightens anxiously, the hunger that prompted her return gone in an instant. She’s slow getting out of the car, and by the time she’s crosses the drive the front door to the house is already open.

“I made you come back!” Stevie announces triumphantly when Trixie crosses the threshold, flings her arms around Trixie’s legs in a fiercely tight squeeze.

“What?” Trixie says in surprise. She pats the back of Stevie’s head a little awkwardly.

“I made you come back!” she repeats, tips her head back to grin wide up at Trixie. “I figured out the right spell and then you came back. Because I’m a real witch.”

“Uhhh,” Trixie mumbles, entirely uncertain as to how to reaction. Apparently she not only has a daughter but she has a daughter who thinks she’s a witch. So that’s something.

“Stevie,” Katya says from the kitchen doorway. Her voice sounds calm but in a measured way that reminds Trixie of the way she’s learned to talk to her sisters when she’s having to force down her emotions. “Can you go to your room for a while?”

“Why?” Stevie asks. She’s still holding onto Trixie’s legs, keeping her trapped on the spot.

“Because we need to have a grown up conversation,” Katya tells her. Her arms are folded across her chest and she hasn’t looked at Trixie once since she walked in, even though Trixie’s sure she must have been the one to open the door for her, there’s no way Stevie could have reached the handle.

“About me?” Stevie asks. Trixie can’t help but snort in amusement despite the circumstances -- the wholly self-centered approach little kids take to life never fails to amuse her.

“No,” Katya says patiently.

“Then what about?” Stevie asks, sounds suspicious. She’s turned around to face Katya but her arms are still looped around Trixie’s legs behind her, locking her knees together, her head tipped back against her thigh.

“Boring stuff. Mortgages and taxes. Bills, that kind of thing,” Katya answers, well practiced.

“Yuck. I don’t think witches have to pay bills,” Stevie says thoughtfully. Despite the solemnity of her expression, Trixie’s sure she sees Katya’s lips twitch, fighting back a smile.

“That’s pretty lucky for them,” Katya replies.

“I’m gonna be one,” Stevie tells her seriously, “real soon.”

“Sure you are. Can you go to your room now?”

Stevie holds onto Trixie’s legs even more tightly. “I don’t wanna,” she tells Katya. Trixie can hear the pout in her voice without needing to see it.

“We can use an incense before bed later, okay? One of the nice ones,” Katya offers. Stevie seems to hesitate and then her grip on Trixie loosens.

“The nicest one?” Stevie bargains. Relief flickers across Katya’s face.

“Of course,” she promises.

“Okay,” Stevie agrees. She spins around and hugs Trixie’s legs again, just briefly, then looks up at her. She extends her arms up, wiggles small fingers in Trixie’s direction until Trixie realises what she’s asking for and crouches down, wraps her arms around her in a hug.

“I’m glad I made you come back,” Stevie whispers into her ear. Trixie can’t think of what to say in response but Stevie pulls away pretty quickly, scampers off across hallway and around the corner, out of sight. Trixie straightens up again and looks over at Katya, who’s finally looking her direction. Her expression’s pinched and her eyes are hard.

“What the hell was that?” she asks, her words coming out as almost a hiss. She doesn’t move any closer to Trixie and Trixie stays standing just inside the hall, the occasional cold breeze sweeping through the crack between the front door and its frame and making her shiver.

“I…” Trixie trails off, swallows hard. Katya looks like she’s been genuinely worried and it just reinforces the insanity of the situation for Trixie. It really does seem like today should have been nothing out of the ordinary for Katya, that to her it seems like Trixie’s lost her mind and is acting completely out of character. She doesn’t have a clue where to begin explaining everything to her.

"You said another bad word.” Stevie’s loud whisper surprises Trixie and  she looks over to see that she’s peering around the wall, can only have gone a few steps when Katya asked to go to her room. Katya starts to make a frustrated noise but manages to bite most of it back, Trixie can see the effort it takes her to pull her lips up into a smile as she looks at Stevie.

“‘Hell’ isn’t really a bad word,” she says.

“I’m not allowed to say it at school,” Stevie replies.

“How do you know-- you know what, never mind. You’re not allowed to say it because you’re five. I’m a grown up, I’m allowed to say it,” Katya tells her.

“That’s not very fair,” Stevie says seriously.

“Maybe you’re right,” Katya concedes, “and we can debate it later, but can you go play in your room for now, please?”

“Am I in trouble?” Stevie asks.

“No,” Katya assures her.

“What about if I say hell?”

“Stevie!”

“So unfair,” Stevie grumbles, but doesn't try to protest any more before taking herself away again. This time Katya follows, stops just around the corner of the hallway to make sure Stevie’s actually followed her instructions this time. She reappears a second later, comes closer to Trixie this time but her stance is still just as closed off, arms once again wrapped defensively around herself, fingers grasping at the material of her flannel at her sides.

“Well?” she demands, looks Trixie dead in the eye.

“I just needed to get out for a minute,” Trixie offers lamely. Katya raises one eyebrow at her.

“‘Get out for a minute’?” she repeats incredulously. “Trixie, you disappeared for more than two hours. You didn’t take your purse, or even just your wallet, or your goddamn phone. I had to come up with an excuse so that Stevie didn’t think you’d run out on her when I didn’t even know that that wasn’t _exactly_ what was going on!” Katya sounds like she’s practically bursting with anger and hurt, hanging onto her control by the tips of her fingers and just barely keeping her voice from raising into a shout.

Trixie wonders, just briefly, if that’s something she’s had a lot of practice doing. Whether this is one of _those_ households, like the one Trixie grew up in, where everyone always seemed on the edge of yelling and no one was certain which fight would be the last. Trixie promised herself a long time ago that she’d never live like that once she had any say in the matter, would never do that to any family of her own. She hopes to god that, real or not, she hasn’t gone back on her word in this home.

“Trixie!” Katya’s voice snaps her out of her head and she blinks rapidly at her, clears her thoughts.

“I’m sorry!” Trixie says. Katya huffs.

“Can you please just tell me,” she says, takes a step closer, “what the fuck is going on with you? You’re really scaring me.”

“I don’t know what’s going on with me,” Trixie says honestly. Katya bites her lip, uncrosses her arms and reaches out to wrap one hand around Trixie’s elbow. She doesn’t grasp it hard, barely touches it, but Trixie still flinches. Katya’s hand drops immediately.

“Did something happen?” Katya asks, and her voice is a little softer now, more concerned than angry. “Is your mom okay?”

“My mom?” Trixie repeats back, can hear the breathless surprise in her own voice.

“Yeah. She seemed okay last weekend, but did something happen?” Katya asks again. She looks like she considers trying to touch Trixie’s arm again but thinks better of it: her hand twitches but stays by her side.

“No,” Trixie says, has no idea if it’s the truth or not but decides it’s the safest answer for now, “she’s okay. I think. I hope so, anyway.”

“Right,” Katya says, looks even more confused by Trixie’s answer. Trixie can’t blame her. “So what’s going on? Why the hell did you disappear like that?”

“I…” Trixie trails off and swallows. She wants to let everything spill out, tell Katya exactly how lost she is, that she isn’t supposed to be here and that she has no idea what’s going on, but she can’t get the words out. The thing is, really, that Katya might be kooky, might be one of the people Trixie trusts the most in the whole world -- or _trusted_ , maybe, until last night, which suddenly feels a million years ago and the memory of it knocks the breath out of her for a second -- but Trixie still isn’t sure that she’ll believe her. And she has no idea what she’d do if she didn’t, wouldn’t exactly be left with a lot of options.

“I just needed some air,” she says finally. Katya looks at her long and hard, like she’s looking for the truth in Trixie’s expression. Trixie fights the urge to look away from her even though she can feel her face heating up as Katya’s pale eyes search her features. Her hand comes up to touch Trixie’s arm again but this time Trixie anticipates it, doesn’t let herself react. It’s actually a little reassuring, a warm palm just barely pressing against her forearm.

“Are you feeling okay? You were tossing and turning all night,” Katya says.

“I was?” Trixie’s struck with the belated realisation that they share the bed she woke up in and is sure she must be blushing.

“Yeah. You woke me up a couple of times.”

“Sorry,” Trixie offers, but Katya waves it off. “Maybe I could go lay down?” she suggests, tries not to sound overly hopeful. She had no idea what her schedule is supposed to be -- doesn’t she have a job to go to? Maybe she has time off since it’s almost Christmas and Stevie’s at home. She hopes she isn’t going to have to bluff her way through something else, though maybe a job would be easier to get through than more conversations with Katya and Stevie.

“Maybe that’s a good idea,” Katya agrees. Trixie barely holds back a sigh of relief. “Do you want me to come sit with you for a while?”

“No,” Trixie says quickly, feels bad at the flash of hurt across Katya’s expression.

“Okay,” she says, nods and takes her hand back from Trixie’s arm. She gives her a searching look again but it’s shorter and then she steps away from her. Trixie realises she’s moving aside, trying to let Trixie pass her in the narrow hallway so she can get to the bedroom. “I’ll keep an eye on Stevie,” she promises.

“Thanks,” she says. Katya looks a little surprised.

“You don’t need to thank me,” she says, “she’s my kid too. I can watch her while you take a nap.”

“Right. Of course,” Trixie says quickly. She doesn’t hang around any longer; doesn’t let herself look back at Katya before she ducks into the bedroom.

The curtains are open now but Trixie pulls them closed, pushes the door shut on her way back around to the side of the bed she woke up in -- she makes sure to give the edge of the bedframe a wide berth as she goes, remembers how much it hurt when she bashed her knee against it earlier. Her phone is still lying on the bed covers and she picks it up, runs her thumb gingerly over the cracked screen. She wishes she knew the password but she knows she can’t ask Katya what Stevie’s birthday is without making it even more totally obvious that something’s wrong with her. Trixie stares at the screen until it fades to black again, then sets it down on the dresser.

Trixie’s just crawled under the covers when the door opens, just a little, a crack of light from the hallway slanting across the bed. For a moment she thinks it must be Stevie, wonders if she can pretend to be asleep already to avoid any more difficult conversations, but then she realises that it’s just one of the dogs. She hasn’t really seen this one around, but now it’s jumping onto the bed and padding over to curl up beside her.

“Hello,” Trixie whispers, reaches out to pet soft red fur. It reminds her of the dog they had when she was younger, when her mom was trying so hard to make everything better after her dad walked out that she thought bringing home a dog might help fix things. Trixie and her brother had fought for days over what to name her: he’d wanted to name her after some girl at school but Trixie had wanted to name her after the most popular country singer of the moment, had said so adamantly over and over that it was a perfect fit for a dog with such pretty red fur. Their mom had had to step in and name her just to end their bickering and they’d both sulked over what a boring name Lady was.

In the end it had hardly mattered: their step-dad hated dogs and had made them get rid of her when he moved in.

Trixie’s hand brushes over the dog’s collar and she turns over the ID tag dangling from it: _Reba._

Trixie makes a noise that’s halfway between a groan and a laugh. Reba pushes her nose against her hand and she scratches her snout.

“I think I’m going crazy,” Trixie whispers to her. She hopes she can at least admit that to the dog, even if she can’t to anyone else.

Reba just stares at her, eyes barely visible in the dark room. Trixie sighs, scrubs her hand over her eyes. Now she’s in bed she feels exhausted and it isn’t hard to let her eyes close. She can figure out what’s going on when she wakes up, she thinks. Maybe, she hopes desperately as she drifts off, it’ll all be a little clearer once she’s had some rest.

 

***

 

“Trixie! _Trixie!_ ”

There’s a loud banging on Trixie’s door and she wakes up with a start, gasps and sits bolt upright in bed.

 _Her_ bed. Her eyes are wide and she’s breathing quick and deep from the shock of how she woke up, but Trixie quickly figures out where she is. She’s back, she’s home, and it seems, miraculously, amazingly, like everything that happened was just one terrifying, immersive nightmare.

“Trixie!”

She realises it’s her mom’s who’s shouting at her through her door and it takes her a second to recognise why.

Her phone’s ringing.

Trixie practically falls out of bed in her efforts to scramble to her feet, crosses the room in clumsy steps to reach the phone. She picks it up without thinking, still reeling from the shock of waking up back in her own bed.

“Trixie? Trixie, are you there? Thank god, okay, listen, I know it’s late -- early, I don’t even know – but—”

Trixie slams the phone down.

“Trixie, it’s five in the damn morning!” Her mom’s yelling through the door in a hushed way she’s perfected so well. For a second Trixie’s transported back into the kitchen, Katya talking to her in that calmly angry way.

Except that wasn’t real. That was some weird, grown up Katya Trixie managed to dream up, she just hung up on the real Katya. Eighteen year old Katya who Trixie doesn’t want anything to do with right now.

“Sorry!” she called out to her mom. She stares at the phone; she doesn’t trust Katya not to call her again. She shuffles over to the wall and yanks out the cable for the phone.

Trixie’s heart is racing as she climbs back into bed. She feels practically weak with relief, so beyond grateful to be back in reality that she just wants to go straight back to sleep and forget it ever happened, but she can feel the adrenaline coursing through her body and making her feel wide awake. She can’t reconcile the Katya she just heard on the phone with the one she managed to conjure up in her dream, can’t understand for the life of her how her brain created such a horrifyingly realistic world for her. She’d always wished she knew how to make herself have lucid dreams, but if that’s what they’re like then Trixie never wants to have another one again.

Trixie sighs, wriggles down under her covers again. She wonders if there’s a chance that she’ll have forgotten this entire thing by the time she wakes up again -- it doesn’t feel likely but it’ll hopefully at least feel a little more further away, a little less real.

As Trixie rolls over to press her face into her pillow, she freezes. Her hair’s fallen across her face and it doesn’t smell like her own shampoo that she used that morning before going over to Katya’s house to get ready for Alaska’s party. It smells like the shampoo from her dream, something faintly floral but different from her favourite.

Trixie fumbles in the darkness to snag a hair tie from beside her bed, pulls her hair up into a haphazard bun so it can’t bother her. She’s driving herself crazy, she decides, telling herself she can smell things that aren’t real. Because it wasn’t real, it _can’t_ have been real. It was just a dream, and it freaked her out enough to make her brain play tricks on her.

Still, she can’t stop herself from pushing back her covers, pushing up her pyjama pants over her knee.

There’s a dark bruise blossoming right over the spot where she banged it against the bedframe in her dream.

“No, no, _no_ ,” she hisses to herself, pulls her covers back up to her chin and squeezes her eyes shut. She isn’t going to let this drive her insane -- it was just a dream. A nightmare, really, and she isn’t going to entertain it any longer.

She can still smell the unfamiliar shampoo as she falls asleep.

 

***

 

When Trixie wakes up again, it’s to bright light streaming into her room and almost blinding her when she opens her eyes. She groans and presses the back of her arm across her eyes, trying to block it out, the other hand grasping for her covers to pull them over her head. She keeps her eyes closed, sinks back into the comfortable bed, and hopes she can fall back to sleep easily.

That lasts for just a second or two before she realises that things aren’t right.

“Oh, god,” she groans to herself, lets her arm drop from across her face and squints into the bright air. “Not again.”

The sheets underneath her are silky smooth, the mattress soft and big and comfortable and a million miles away from the one she dreamed up before. The room she’s in is huge with a whole wall of big windows; once Trixie squints past the light she can see bright sunshine and leafy trees, nothing like wintry Wisconsin or even Chicago.

Trixie still feels tired down to her bones as she rolls out of bed, but a little more calm about her surroundings. Apparently her brain is determined to fuck with her tonight, drop her from one hyper realistic dream to another, so at least she’s slightly more prepared this time.

It helps that it seems like this place is a hell of a lot more cushy than the one she wound up in before. She’s in another house, big and open plan once she walks out of the bedroom, at least half a dozen doors leading off the spacious kitchen and living area that must lead to other bedrooms and rooms she can’t even think of a purpose for.

There doesn’t seem to be anyone else here. Trixie remembers the shock of waking up with Stevie hanging over her, demanding her attention. There’s no insane daughter who thinks she’s a witch in this house; it’s infinitely quieter. More peaceful, Trixie thinks forcefully.

She finds a large bathroom off of the bedroom she woke up in, a huge tub and separate shower that looks fancier than any she’s ever come across before outside of the ones she’s seen on tv. This time it doesn’t take her long to seek out her own reflection; it would have been hard to, given the wide mirror stretching across the bathroom mirror opposite the door.

She looks younger than she did in her other dream. Maybe. She peers at herself more closely, steps nearer to the mirror to inspect her own face. It’s a little thinner, and her hair’s not much longer than she wears it now but it’s shiny and bouncy. The bags under her eyes are still there but most of the little lines she spotted are nowhere to be seen. When Trixie looks over herself she looks slimmer than she thinks she’s ever been; her arms seem pretty toned, skin tanned.

So far, Trixie likes this dream a lot.

It is a _very_ quiet house. It’s big enough that it seems like her footsteps echo through the entire space as she walks around. It’s probably too big for one person, but it feels indulgent, decadent in a way that Trixie’s always fantasised about living. She thinks she could fit her own home in here five times, easily; the tiny house she dreamed up in Milwaukee even more. She comes to a halt by a set of sliding doors leading outside from the kitchen that give her a view of a pool set into the ground outside.

Maybe Trixie wouldn’t mind it so much if she got stuck here for a while.

She takes a long, hot shower, revelling in the fact that there’s no one waiting for her to get out of the bathroom. The shampoo she finds is fancy and the smell reminds her of the products they used on her when her brother's girlfriend had taken her to the salon she worked at to get her hair done one time. When she finally gets out of the shower she wanders back through the bedroom wrapped in a soft towel. She thinks she might have hit a snag when she can’t find a wardrobe of any kind in the huge bedroom, but then she discovers that a door on the opposite wall opens up to an entire walk-in wardrobe and decides that if the dream she had before was a nightmare then this is a perfect dream that she wants to take full advantage of while she can.

There are racks and racks of clothes for her to choose from, more dresses and skirts and shirts than she can even comprehend as she goes through them. Everything seems pretty fancy if a little more muted than she’d pick out for herself, but maybe that’s just part of getting older. She can deal with having a few less bright pink outfits when she gets this much variety to choose from. Still, she can’t help but pull out one of the few pink dresses she spots, marvels over the rows of boots and heels set against the wall at the back of the room and finds a pair of pink cowboy boots in the furthest corner, half hidden under more sensible brown ones.

It isn’t until Trixie emerges out of the closet that she realises that she isn’t entirely alone. Reba’s sitting in the doorway to her bedroom, almost perfectly still and watching Trixie as she comes closer to her.

“It’s you again,” Trixie says, feels the tiniest spark of relief at the assurance that she isn’t entirely alone in this place. “I guess it’s just you and me here, huh?” Trixie glances down at her hands. No rings on her fingers this time.

She taps at her knees, tries to get Reba to come over, but she doesn’t budge. It’s a little weird after she was so happy to curl up with Trixie before, but Trixie decides that she isn’t going to waste any energy worrying about how much her dream dog likes her.

There’s a buzzing noise from the side of the huge bed. It doesn’t take Trixie as long to figure out what it is this time; sure enough, there’s a phone vibrating on the small set of drawers next to the bed. It looks almost identical to the one from before except the screen isn’t completely smashed, and she picks it up gingerly, looks for the button to open it up. Except there isn’t a button on this one, and Trixie can only tap helplessly at the screen as it vibrates.

 _Thursday December 21 2017_ , the screen reads again when the vibrations cut off. At least Trixie’s dreams are consistent. Apparently it’s almost two, and Trixie wonders what lifestyle she’s imagined for herself that she can sleep in this late whenever she likes.

She sets the phone down again since it seems unlikely that she’ll be able to get into it any time soon, switches her attention to getting dressed instead, goes to town on the drawers upon drawers filled with makeup she finds in the bathroom, finds the perfect pink lipstick in the very back of one of them. It looks like it’s barely been touched, and she grins at herself in the mirror once she’s applied it.

Just when Trixie’s running out of things to keep herself occupied with she hears the sound of a doorbell. She passes Reba on her way to the door, curled up small in a dog bed tucked into the corner; she watches Trixie go past her without moving again and it’s starting to creep Trixie out a little how pathetic she seems. Still, she brushes it off, pulls open the big front door set in the middle of the hallway.

“Pearl?” she says in surprise.

There’s no mistaking the woman in front of her: she has the same light blonde hair, blue eyes and pale skin; even the same ring through her nose. It’s definitely the same Pearl, but that doesn’t make Trixie any less surprised to see her.

“What the fuck are you wearing?” Pearl asks, squints at Trixie with a wrinkled nose, expression unimpressed.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” Trixie replies. Pearl rolls her eyes and puts her hands to her hips.

“I’m not _that_ late, we’ve still got time. You don’t need to get your panties in a bunch, jesus,” she says.

“Late for what?” Trixie asks. Pearl gives her a big, slow grin.

“ _This_ is why you need an assistant,” she says, waves her pointer finger at her. “Come on, let’s go. We can take my car, I think I’m blocking you in.”

“Uh,” Trixie says, fumbles for a second, before deciding to just go along with it. “Sure. Let me grab my things.”

They must be somewhere on the west coast, Trixie figures, for it to be this warm in December. She doesn’t need a jacket, just grabs her phone and tosses it into a designer purse that sitting by the inside of the door.

“Oh god, you can’t wear those. Why are you wearing those?” Pearl asks in disgust when Trixie steps into her boots.

“Why not? They’re cute!” Trixie says, swings her purse over her shoulder and shuts the door behind her.

“Christ. I guess they’ll be a talking point, at least,” Pearl says as they walk to her car. The front of the house opens up to a huge driveway, big enough to fit half a dozen cars, but Pearl’s pulled hers right across the only other one there, a big, shiny SUV that Trixie guesses must be her own. She’s grateful she doesn’t have to drive this time as she climbs into Pearl’s passenger seat.

“Where are we going?” she asks Pearl, hopes the question won’t elicit too much confusion from her.

“I tried to sync everything over to your calendar so you could see what we’ve got on for the day. DId you see?” Pearl replies.

“You did what?” Trixie asks, trying to make sense of what she said.

“On your phone calendar,” Pearl says. Trixie grabs her phone out of her purse, taps at the screen in another futile attempt to get it open. “Have you still not figured it out yet? I know it’s a new phone but I swear, it’s not that complicated, you’re so useless,” Pearl says with a roll of her eyes.

It’s been a few years since Trixie really spent any time with Pearl, but it definitely feels like a significant role reversal to have her tell Trixie that she’s useless.

When they stop at a light a moment later Pearl grabs the phone from her, presses a button on its side and then holds it up in front of Trixie’s face.

“What are you doing?” Trixie asks, baffled.

“There,” Pearl says, swipes at the screen and hands it back to Trixie. Sure enough, it’s open and seems to be working fine -- Trixie’s careful not to inadvertently switch it off again. “Check your calendar.”

At first the phone seems confusing, but Trixie quickly realises that everything’s pretty clearly labelled. There’s messages -- apparently she has four waiting for her -- mail -- over a thousand of those, which is kind of intimidating -- and Trixie spots the word ‘calendar’ in the corner. She taps at it carefully and the screen’s filled with an itinerary for the day.

“Why do we have so many meetings?” she asks Pearl. Pearl glances over at her like she’s crazy.

“It’s less than yesterday!” she says.

“Oh,” Trixie says, overwhelmed.

“Are you okay? You seem weird,” Pearl says. Trixie holds back a sigh; at least she got away with her attempts to bluff through for a little while longer this time.

“I’m fine,” she says.

“You didn’t read that article I sent you, did you? I should have read it before I forwarded it.”

“What article?” Trixie asks. She swipes at the screen until she’s back on the main page, considers before tapping open the four messages. They’re all from Pearl, including a link to a webpage.

“You don’t need to read it. It’s all bullshit, it’s a waste of your time,” Pearl says. Trixie already has it open.

 _Trixie Mattel: The Most Problematic Comedian Of 2017?_ the headline reads.

“Comedian?” Trixie murmurs to herself.

“Don’t read it, Trixie, there’s no point,” Peal says again. Trixie ignores her.

“What’s white feminism?” she asks a few paragraphs in, horror building in her chest.

“Ignore it. I mean, you’re not even white, so,” Pearl tries.

“Is it a bad thing?” Trixie asks, even though she can already guess from context that it’s not great.

“Better than not being feminist at all, right?”

“Oh my god,” Trixie says.

The article is scathing. It makes Trixie out to be pretty successful, mentions tours and stints writing for tv and even a book, but she doesn’t sound popular.

“This person seems to hate me,” Trixie says to Pearl, swallows around the lump in her throat. Her wonderful dream already feels like it’s starting to crash around her. Of course she’s imagined herself in a career she’s always fantasised about doing -- and imagined herself bombing it.

At least no one seemed to hate her in Milwaukee.

“I told you not to read it!” Pearl says. She pulls up in a parking spot and grabs the phone from Trixie’s hand and it clicks locked; Pearl drops it into her own bag.

“Hey!” Trixie protests, but Pearl ignores her and climbs out of the car. Trixie scrambles after her as she crosses the street and heads into a cafe. “I thought we had meetings to go to,” Trixie says when she catches up to her.

“I need caffeine first,” Pearl says, “and something to eat.”

“Can I have my phone back?” Trixie asks. Pearl gives her a sceptical look.

“Will you promise not to read anymore of that article?”

“No,” Trixie says honestly.

“Ugh. Whatever, go nuts,” Pearl says, slaps the phone into Trixie’s palms.

While Pearl gets in line Trixie tries to unlock her phone again. She feels dumb holding it up to her own face in a crowded coffee shop, and it feels like all eyes are on her, but she needs to get it unlocked and this seems like the only way. Thankfully it only takes a second and then she’s back on the home page; she taps into her messages again. _Pearl, Manager, Lawyers, Housekeeper_. She scrolls down the list of messages, heart sinking when she realises that barely any of them are personal. It seems like she’s incapable of coming up with a nice dream world for herself.

She tries to ignore the absence of _Mom_. Doesn’t let her think about the fact that there’s no _Katya_.

“I wanna sit down and eat,” Pearl says when she rejoins her, pushes a paper coffee cup and a plastic salad container into Trixie’s hands and leads her to a table.

“This is lunch?” Trixie asks, squints at the salad.

“It’s what you always get,” Pearl says, shrugs as she opens up her own food.

“Oh, no. There’s chicken in here,” Trixie says once she’s peered into the container.

“Yeah. And?” Pearl says.

“I’m a vegetarian!”

“Since when?” Pearl asks with an unimpressed expression.

“Since I was nine,” Trixie insists, pushes the food away from her.

“Are you sure?” Pearl asks doubtfully.

“Yes!” Trixie sighs, focuses on the coffee instead. It’s so strong and bitter she can barely swallow down the mouthful she takes; she resigns herself to going caffeine free and hungry.

While Pearl eats Trixie scrolls through the thousands of emails on her phone, hoping desperately to spot a name she recognises or even just something from someone who this version of herself actually seems to know.

Nothing.

She sets her phone down, taps her nails against the table. They’re perfectly manicured but painted a dark red, nothing like a choice she’d make for herself. They look wrong to her.

“Hey,” she says to Pearl as she finishes her salad, tapping away at her own phone. “Do you know if there’s something wrong with my dog? She seemed sad.”

“I thought you were going to get rid of her?” Pearl says. “I don’t know what you were thinking, getting a dog. You’re never there, what did you want her for?”

“What?” Trixie asks, surprised. She’d never do that. Would she?

“Can’t you just give her back? She’s probably miserable in that big house by herself,” Pearl says.

For the first time, Trixie wonders if maybe Reba’s not the only one.

When they get back outside, Pearl stops by her car. She opens her purse and rummages through it, produces a pack of cigarettes.

“Can I borrow a light?” she asks Trixie.

“What? No, I don’t smoke,” Trixie replies. Pearl barks out a laugh.

“Very funny. Come on, I’m not going to steal it,” she says, reaches over to open Trixie’s purse herself.

“I’m serious!” Trixie says, vaguely horrified. She doesn’t smoke, has never even really been tempted despite spending so much time around Katya.

Pearl produces cigarettes and a lighter from Trixie’s bag with a raised eyebrow.

“What the fuck,” Trixie breaths.

“You’re acting like a total freak today,” Pearl tells her. She lights her cigarette and hands Trixie her lighter back, exhales a cloud of smoke in her direction. Trixie coughs, tries to waft it away with her hand before looking down at the lighter in her hand.

She recognises it immediately. It’s old and tacky, the paint chipped off at one side: a red heart set on a black background, white writing across it that reads ‘I <3 Boston’.

It’s Katya’s.

Why does she have Katya’s lighter?

Trixie opens her phone up again. She glances over the icons and finds one that reads ‘Contacts’. Scrolls down to the Ks.

No Katya.

“Do you know Katya’s number?” she asks Pearl, tries to sound casual. Maybe Trixie just doesn’t have it in her new phone yet.

“Katya who?” Pearl asks. Trixie’s heart sinks.

“ _Katya_ Katya. You know,” she says.

“Katya from high school?” Pearl asks. She’s squinting at Trixie again like she thinks she’s being weird.

“Yes!”

“Of course I don’t. Why would I know her number? I haven’t heard from her since school,” Pearl says dismissively. “Why do you want her number? Are you on some kind of nostalgia trip today or something, is that why you look like you showered in pink paint when you got up?”

“Since high school?” Trixie repeats, barely even takes in Pearl’s insult.

“When was the last time you even spoke to her, anyway? Graduation? Did you even talk at graduation?” Pearl asks.

“What?” Trixie says, horrified.

“Not that I can blame her,” Pearl says, takes another long drag of her cigarette.

“What do you mean?” Trixie asks, looks down at the lighter in her hand. It’s one of Katya’s favourites; sometimes she leaves it in Trixie’s car, or gives it to her for safekeeping if she doesn’t have any pockets to put it in.

Pearl gives Trixie another confused look.

“Oh, come on, Trixie,” she says, and Trixie already has a bad feeling about what she’s going to say.

“I mean, after what you did to her? No wonder she hated you so much. I wouldn’t have ever spoken to you again, either.”

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "How are you feeling?" Katya asks. She's leaning one knee against the edge of the bathtub, as close to Trixie as she can get without stepping out of it.
> 
> "Okay," Trixie says, doing a brief mental check of her body. She does feel okay, besides the fact that she still feels tired, somehow, and she wonders if she's destined to never feel well-rested again. It seems unfair that she has to be tired even in her dreams.
> 
> "Better than earlier?" Katya asks. She turns back towards the shower, reaching up on her toes to try to unscrew the shower head again. Her sweater is far too big and slips down over her shoulders; Trixie can see the freckles on them, the faintest of tan lines over her back. "Trixie?" Katya says, and Trixie realises she's waiting for her to answer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello! as you may have noticed, christmas happened and i didn't finish this story in time for a few different reasons, which was a shame! but i've received so much lovely, generous feedback from so many of you about this fic, and i really hope you'll enjoy the rest of it even if it's no longer the holiday season!
> 
> since i'm no longer restricting myself to getting this done during the month of december i decided to split this chapter into two parts to prevent it from being too long, so now the chapter count is six rather than five. i owe lots of people lots of gratitude for their help but no one more so than the lovely [johanna](http://mallstars.tumblr.com). you're the best!
> 
> if you like what you read please drop me a comment at the bottom, they're truly what keep me going! and if you want to, come say hi @[crackerdyke](http://crackerdyke.tumblr.com) too :)

Trixie stares at Pearl, heart thumping so loud in her chest she’s sure Pearl must be able to hear it.

“What do you mean, after what I did?” she asks finally.

“Why do you want to go over this? It was years ago, Trixie,” Pearl says dismissively.

“Fifteen years ago,” Trixie says. Apparently she hasn’t spoken to Katya in fifteen years.

“Right,” Pearl says, gives Trixie a side-eyed look that tells her that she’s not acting like herself.

Trixie’s starting to get the feeling that she doesn’t want to act like herself, whoever that's supposed to be here.

“Can we stop dwelling on high school now?” Pearl asks. She tosses the stub of her cigarette to the ground and grinds her heel against it, then pulls open the driver’s door to her car.

“But,” Trixie starts, but Pearl’s already climbed in and slammed the door shut. Trixie walks around to the other side of the car and opens the passenger door. She's barely even in her seat before Pearl starts driving. "What the hell?" Trixie gasps, has to scramble to get the door shut and her seat belt tugged across her.

"We're going to be late," Pearl replies, makes it sound like it's Trixie's fault that they stopped first to get coffee and then for Pearl to have a cigarette.

“Late for what?” Trixie asks. Pearl swings the car around a turn without slowing down and Trixie grabs onto the side of her seat, trying to keep herself steady. She remembers dreading the day that Pearl was allowed to get behind the wheel of a car back when they were friends. They’d drifted apart before either of them were old enough to drive, and now Trixie can tell that she was right to be wary of Pearl’s driving.

“Check your calendar! I put everything in there so that I wouldn’t have to remember,” Pearl says.

“So you don’t actually know where you’re driving to right now?” Trixie asks.

“They’re all in the same direction. Pretty much, anyway,” Pearl says. She’s just as flazeda as she always was.

It takes Trixie a minute to get the knack of opening her phone, another to open up her calendar and find the right address to read off to Pearl.

“Oh, that’s not far. We should be fine,” Pearl says with a wave of her hand. The car swerves towards the middle of the road before she replaces her hand on the wheel, still nonchalant.

If I die in a dream, Trixie thinks, I don’t really die. Right?

“Did you figure out what you’re going to do for Christmas yet?” Pearl says.

“What?” Trixie replies, still mostly focused on keeping herself from being flung around in her seat by Pearl’s driving. She’s not quite sure how she manages to move the car quite so erratically when the traffic around them means she can’t be going all that fast at all.

“Christmas. Did you make plans yet?” Pearl repeats.

“I don’t have any?” Trixie asks.

“Not that you’ve told me about,” Pearl says.

“Oh.” The empty feeling in Trixie’s stomach seems like its spreading around her body, consuming her inch by inch. “I’ll be at my mom’s, I guess?”

“Really?” Pearl replies, glancing over at Trixie with a surprised look on her face; the car lurches towards the curb with the movement and Trixie grabs at the inside of the car door again to keep herself from being thrown around too much.

“Yeah, why not?”

“I don’t know. It’s been a while, hasn’t it? I didn’t think you talked to her all that much anymore,” Pearl says. She sounds so casual about it and Trixie swallows around the lump forming in her throat.

“I guess,” she says, “but it’s Christmas. I should see my mom, shouldn’t I?”

Pearl glances over at her again, just briefly enough to avoid throwing the car around too much. Maybe Trixie’s uncertainty is more obvious than she realised, because when Pearl speaks again her tone is softer.

“If that’s what you want to do. Have you booked a flight?”

“I don’t know,” Trixie says honestly.

“Uh...okay? Well you probably should if you haven’t, there were only a few seats left on the plane I booked to Chicago last week.” Pearl sounds thrown by Trixie’s reply - which, Trixie thinks, is pretty understandable.

“Yeah, sure. I’ll figure it out,” Trixie says.

“Good. Just don’t spend Christmas alone, Trixie. Not again,” Pearl says. Trixie stares at her, horrified.

Christmas alone?

Again?

“I…” Trixie trails off. She wants to ask why, what she can possibly have done that meant she didn’t even have anyone to spend the holidays with. But she can’t figure out how to ask without sounding insane, and she doesn’t want to risk finding out what Pearl’s reaction would be to that. She doubts she’d be able to keep the car on the road.

“You’re kind of quiet today,” Pearl says after a minute of quiet. She looks over at Trixie with a curious expression on her face when she stops the car at a light, then lurches them forward a second later when she realises it’s been green the whole time.

“Sorry,” Trixie says.

“Hey, I’m not complaining. A day without you bitching at me is a pretty good day,” Pearl replies.

“Bitching at you?” Trixie repeats. “Why would I bitch at you?”

“I don’t know, I’m a total delight,” Pearl says, a smile curling her lips for just a moment.

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Trixie replies easily. Maybe it seems like this Trixie is a million miles away from who Trixie is, who she wants to be, but it seems like Pearl has hardly changed at all.

“Are you nervous about the meeting?” Pearl asks.

“No,” Trixie says, though even as she says it she realises that maybe that’s the wrong answer. “Uh. Should I be?”

Pearl shrugs. “I’m sure it’ll be fine. The publicists are supposed to be on your side, right? And besides, you weren’t the one who stole the material, it was the people you paid to write your material for you. Surely that counts for something. Except that you were supposed to write your own material. But that’s, like, a technicality. I guess.”

“You guess?” Trixie says. She’s trying to take everything Pearl said: apparently Trixie paid someone to write something that she was supposed to write herself, and they material they gave her was stolen.

It seems like that the scathing article she read on the way to the cafe wasn’t wrong about her. She really does sound kind of terrible.

“I wouldn’t do that,” Trixie says.

“You didn’t! They did – you just can’t tell people they did without admitting that you didn’t write any of it yourself. But hey, figuring out how to fix all of that is the publicist’s job, right?”

“Right,” Trixie echoes. The car comes to a halting stop and she realises they’re in a small parking lot, half a dozen other cars parked closer to the building. Pearl, wisely, has chosen the spot furthest away from them.

“Are you sure you don’t want to take that lipstick off before we go in?” Pearl asks as she pulls the key out of the ignition, squinting over at Trixie.

“What? Why?” Trixie demands, crossing her arms over her chest.

“It looks kind of dumb,” Pearl says, never one for tact.

“I like it,” Trixie says. When Pearl raises an eyebrow she sticks her chin up defiantly, grabs her purse and gets out of the car.

“Whatever,” Pearl says and climbs out of the car too.

It’s only when they get close to the door that Trixie realises just how far in over her head she is.

“Hey,” she says to Pearl as the automatic doors slide open in front of them, “what do I need to say in this meeting?”

“I don’t know,” Pearl says, looking over at her like she’s crazy. “What do you normally say?”

“Don’t you come in too?” Trixie asks helplessly.

“Why would I? It’s nothing to do with me.”

“I thought you were my assistant?”

“I didn’t know you needed any assisting in your meetings,” Pearl says dryly. She reaches the front desk before Trixie can reply, leaving Trixie two steps behind her and wondering how the hell she can get out of going into some meeting where she’ll inevitably make a total fool of herself.

“Oh god,” she murmurs to herself. She considers trying to pinch herself again, just to see if maybe that’ll help get her out of this nightmare situation this time. But it’s not like it worked before, and she thinks she’ll look a whole lot more crazy doing it in the lobby of some fancy building than she did in a tiny Milwaukee kitchen with only Katya and Stevie to see her.

 _That wasn’t real,_ Trixie reminds herself, _they weren’t real_. This isn’t real either; none of it is. She needs to get a grip on herself.

“Trixie.” Pearl’s turned away from the desk now, taken a few steps to close the gap between them.

“Did you find out where the meeting is?” Trixie asks. Pearl pulls a face.

“Yeah, uh...about that,” she says, glances back at the women sitting behind the desk. Trixie follows her gaze and they both look down at the screens in front of her, making it even more obvious that they were trying to listen to their conversation. “Turns out I might have mixed up a few of the times?” Pearl actually sounds a little uncertain for the first time, and that makes Trixie even more wary.

“What happened?” she asks.

“I got the time wrong. Your meeting isn’t now,” Pearl says, shifting her weight between her feet.

“Oh!” Trixie says, feels relief flooding through her. She wonders if maybe this dream doesn’t necessarily have to turn into a nightmare after all. “When is it? Later on? Tomorrow?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Pearl says dismissively, “it was yesterday. I thought I’d booked everything for today but apparently I double-booked it all for yesterday and now you missed all of your appointments.”

“Wow,” Trixie says after a moment, “you’re a really bad assistant, aren’t you?”

“It’s not my fault you scared off every other assistant you hired. You should be grateful that I said I’d do this for you when you couldn’t find anyone else who’d take the job,” Pearl says. She’s already walking back towards the lobby entrance and Trixie hurries to fall into step beside her.

“Scared them off how?” she asks. Pearl looks over at her with one eyebrow raised.

“You can only make people cry so many times before they inevitably quit, Trixie. And you know how quickly people hear about that kind of stuff around here, no one wants to be some bitch’s underpaid assistant just to get yelled at all the time.”

Trixie’s steps slow down a little as they reach the car. Pearl gets straight in, doesn’t stop for a cigarette this time, and Trixie goes around the car.

“I’m a bitch,” she says quietly to herself, trying to swallow the bitter truth of the words. She pauses with her hand on the door handle, not quite willing yet to get in and face more painful revelations with Pearl.

“Trixie!” Pearl’s leaned across the passenger seat and opened the door from the inside. Trixie blinks at her in surprise, and Pearl gestures past Trixie. Trixie looks over her shoulder: there are a couple of other people in the parking lot, and now she notices that one of them is holding their phone up in front of their face. “Trixie!” Pearl says again, sounds exasperated, and tugs at Trixie’s arm to pull her into the car. “Don’t be an idiot. They’re only going to write more stupid stories about how you’re trying to do damage control if they get pictures of you here.”

“I thought we _were_ trying to do damage control,” Trixie says, hastily clicks her seatbelt into place when Pearl lurches the car forwards towards the parking lot exit.

“You don’t want them to be able to say that, though,” Pearl says. Once they’re clear of the parking lot and sitting in bumper to bumper traffic, she looks over at Trixie again. “Are you going to yell at me now?”

“What?”

“For the appointments. I guess I could call around and see if we can reschedule anything for this evening, if anywhere’s still open,” Pearl suggests halfheartedly.

“No!” Trixie says quickly. Pearl gives her another curious look and she forces herself to sound a little calmer when she continues. “No, it’s fine. It doesn’t matter, we can regroup tomorrow.”

“Are you sure?” Pearl asks, tone full of disbelief.

“Sure. Could you drop me back at home?” Trixie asks. She does her best to sound as polite as possible, all too mindful of everything Pearl’s said about she normally treats her. Pearl nods, still eyeing her suspiciously until she has to look at the road again.

It doesn’t take too long to get back to Trixie’s house. When Pearl seems to realise that Trixie really isn’t going to start yelling she turns on the radio and starts scanning through the stations. Trixie finds herself expecting to hear a Fleetwood Mac song come on, but instead it’s all generic pop music that doesn’t sound all that dissimilar to what she usually hears on the radio.

Apparently Stevie Nicks’ influence hasn’t followed her to every reality she can think of.

“Do you want me to see if anyone could call you tonight? Maybe some of the meetings we had set up don’t need to be in person,” Pearl offers when she pulls up outside of Trixie’s house. Trixie feels overwhelmed once more by how big it seems from out here; how impressive and fancy and a million miles away from anything anyone she knows has ever lived in.

“Don’t worry about it,” she assures Pearl, “really. We can figure it out tomorrow, right?”

“Right,” Pearl agrees slowly. Trixie can tell that she’s not reacting as Pearl would expect her to, but she isn’t about to pretend to be angry about getting out of having to feign any kind of knowledge about her life here. “Just don’t read anymore articles that come up, okay?”

“Okay,” Trixie says. It’s easy to agree, since she isn’t all the sure she’d know where to look for any unless Pearl sends them directly to her. She opens the car door and climbs out, shuts it behind her and steps towards the front door. “I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“Yeah. Don’t forget to book your plane ticket,” Pearl reminds her through her open window. Trixie nods, watches her drive off again before turning towards the door.

When she gets inside the house, it’s almost unbearably quiet. Trixie isn’t used to silence – it’s a rare occasion back home that she has the house to herself, but even when that happens it isn’t this quiet; their house is old and there’s always a floorboard creaking underfoot, the rattling of the water tank behind the walls. This place seems brand new, barely touched, really, and Trixie doesn’t know what to do with the quiet. Her own boots sound so loud as she walks through the house, heels clicking against the hardwood until she makes her way over to a big corner couch and sits down, drops her purse beside it.

Everything is so different here. It’s not like before, when she had other people around her to remind her what she was supposed to be doing; now that Pearl’s gone, she’s all by herself. She should feel calmer without anyone else appearing to demand anything of her, but she doesn’t really feel any less out of her depth. Trixie considers what to do next, reaches into her purse beside her and takes out her phone. At least now she gets to hold it up to her face without worrying about anyone else watching her, and once it unlocks she swipes at the screen to open it, feels a little pleased with herself for getting it right on her first attempt.

Trixie finds herself scrolling through her texts again, trying to find something, anything that might give her some hope that she actually has some friends in this world. Even Pearl she isn’t sure she can really call a friend: it doesn’t seem like they spend time together apart from for work purposes, and from the way Pearl was talking it sounds like she has good reason to want to stay away from Trixie when she can. The texts she reads between the two of them doesn’t paint a picture to contradict anything she’s been thinking – it’s mostly messaging arranging what time they need to meet, Pearl letting her know when she’s booked in meetings and, at one point, a string of three texts, each less decipherable than the last, of Trixie demanding that Pearl pick her up from somewhere at four in the morning.

Trixie clicks back out of the conversation with Pearl feeling even more discouraged than before.

Even with the lack of friendly messages in her list of texts, it still takes Trixie a while to scroll down far enough to find any names she recognises. Her heart jumps when she spots ‘Mom’, but the last messages are from over a month ago. The conversation seems sparse, almost formal in a way in that makes her chest tighten uncomfortably:

 

_Mom: Are you planning on visiting over the holidays?_

_Trixie: Not this year._

 

Apparently Trixie hadn’t even sent her reply for days after her mom had texted her. Her mom hasn’t come back since, either.

The only other name she recognises is Kim’s, even further down the list of names. That conversation is just as much of a disappointment: Kim wished her a happy birthday back in August, and Trixie never replied to her.

“What’s wrong with me?” Trixie murmurs to herself. She tosses the phone back into her bag and kicks off her boots, draws her legs up onto the couch and drags her palms over her face.

She has no idea what to do with herself. She wishes she could enjoy the big, fancy house the way she had when she first woke up, dashing about taking in all the bright space and impressive gadgets, but now it all just feels so empty. It doesn’t feel like her home; she can’t help but think back to the cosy little house she woke up in last time. Maybe that place didn’t feel like Trixie’s home either, but at least it felt like a home. This feels more like an empty shell. Trixie looks around at the bare walls, sparse furniture; thinks of a cramped kitchen, a dark, narrow bedroom.

A child’s room full of life, a whole wall of bright artwork.

Trixie’s standing up before she realises she’s even moved. She doesn’t know why she’s suddenly romanticising the dream world she’s left behind – what she does know is that she needs to get out of her own head before she drives herself insane. She leaves her purse and boots where they are and walks back out into the hallway.

Reba’s curled up in front of the front door, looking just as pathetic as she had when Trixie spotted her before she went out earlier. Trixie realises that she’d completely forgotten that she was here and feels immediately guilty.

“Hey, girl,” she coos, goes over to crouch in front of her. Reba doesn’t try to get any closer to her but she doesn’t run away, either, and Trixie decides to take that as a positive.

She has to try to find some kind of positive about this place, anyway.

“Hey,” she repeats again, reaches out to stroke Reba’s soft fur. When she scratches behind her ears she gets a slow wag of Reba’s tail in response, and she drops down to her knees to get a little closer. Reba’s looking up at her with big dark eyes and after a second she turns her head to press her snout to the inside of Trixie’s wrist.

“I bet you’ve been lonely here, huh? I left you all alone,” Trixie says. Reba’s cold nose presses against Trixie’s hand and she snuffles at her palm. “Let’s find you some food,” Trixie says, infinitely grateful some kind of company to keep her from going insane in the quiet.

Trixie suspects that there are more cupboards in the big kitchen alone than there are in her whole house, but most of them are empty. When she finally finds a few cans of the fanciest looking dog food she’s ever seen, she presents Reba proudly with a bowl of food – and watches in dismay when Reba sniffs at it before walking away. Trixie follows her back out into the hallway and Reba sits in front of the door again.

“Do you wanna go out, is that it? You’ve been cooped up here all day, no wonder you want to go outside,” Trixie says, scratches her ear again. There’s a cupboard by the front door and she finds a leash in the back corner; once she gets it hooked onto Reba’s collar she already seems ten times more excited, standing to attention by the door and nosing and its edge to try to get out. “Okay, okay,” Trixie says, relieved that she’s finally perked up a little. She forgoes her boots for a pair of sneakers and just about remembers to grab the keys to the house as Reba drags her through the door. She seems so eager just to get outside that Trixie can’t help but wonder if she never gets to go for walks. It only adds to the gnawing ache in Trixie’s stomach, another fact about whoever she’s become here that makes her dislike this version of herself even more.

This isn’t real, she reminds herself, none of it is real. Soon she’ll wake up and she’ll be back home, and she can forget all about these bizarre dreams.

It isn’t until Trixie’s been walking for five minutes that she realises it probably would have been a good idea to figure out where she’s going before she left. She wonders if she can look it up on her phone, then remembers that she didn’t stop to pick it up.

“Do you know where we’re going?” she asks Reba. She’s still tugging her along, and Trixie decides she’s just going to have to trust that she has some sense of where she’s taking them. It pays off: apparently Reba’s a smart cookie and knows her way to a park a few blocks away, and Trixie wonders hopefully whether maybe she brings her a lot. Or maybe she’s just been desperate to get out because she never gets to escape from that big, lonely house. Trixie’s gut tells her which option is more realistic, but she decides to ignore her gut and believe the first option if only to try to keep whatever kind of existential crisis that comes of realising she’s become a bad person at bay for as long as possible.

Once she’s unclipped Reba’s leash and watches her wander a few feet away, Trixie finds herself at a loss for what to do now. It’s almost dark outside, and even though it’s a world away from the biting December cold of the Midwest she still wishes she’d picked up a heavier jacket when the cool winter breeze catches her. She wraps her arms around herself, hopes that Reba will get bored soon so that she doesn’t have to stand around waiting for her much longer.

“Hey, are you Trixie Mattel?” says a voice from behind her a minute later. Trixie’s hand comes up to her chest in surprise and she turns around, finds herself faced with a girl around her own age squinting at her through the dusk, a friend lurking behind her.

“Yes?” Trixie replies. She can hear the uncertainty in her own voice, but the girl doesn’t seem bothered by it.

“Awesome! Can we get a selfie?” the girl asks, waves her phone at Trixie and doesn’t wait for a response before into against her arm, her friend pushing into her from the other side.

“Uh,” Trixie starts to say, before there’s a flash from the girl’s phone that leaves her blinking away bright spots in her vision. The girls are gone as quickly as they appeared, giggling together.

“You look cute! Oh my god, look at her face.”

“Oh my god, you really think we can put that on instagram?”

“Why not? It’s funny.”

They’re not even making an effort to keep their voices down, and Trixie swallows down the embarrassment from being ambushed like that. She feels small and cold and tired; more than anything she feels alone.

“Reba?” she calls out, looking around for her, keeps her voice down enough that hopefully she won’t draw the attention of any more strangers. She wants to get away from other people now; she wants to go home, even if the closest she can get to it right now is that big empty house.

She can’t see Reba anywhere, can’t hear her anywhere near her, either. “Reba?” she says again, takes a few steps further into the park. It’s getting dark enough now that she can’t really see all that far ahead, the street lights behind her and passing cars the only real source of light. Even the light from her phone screen would have been helpful, Trixie thinks, wishing again that she’d thought to bring her purse with her.

Reba still doesn’t appear even as Trixie keeps calling for her, getting a little louder each time. “Come on, dog, don’t do this to me,” Trixie murmurs to herself, pulling her jacket closer against her body and squinting into the darkness. She has no idea what she’s supposed to do if she can’t find her – even if she had her phone, who would she call? She can’t think of anyone but Pearl, and even then she’s not sure that she’d come help her. She wishes she had someone there with her to reassure her, or even just freak out with her over her apparent inability to keep hold of a dog for more than ten minutes.

Trixie’s on the verge of wondering if she’d be better off going back to the house and coming back with a flashlight when she hears something moving a few feet away from her. A quick lunge towards the noise has Trixie grasping at fur, and she fumbles to hook Reba’s leash back onto her collar before she can get away again. Reba doesn’t seem like she’s going to try to make another dash for freedom, but Trixie would have to be an idiot to miss the way her tail’s tucked between her legs, snout ducked down as she lets Trixie take her back in the direction they came.

Trixie breathes a long sigh of relief when they finally get inside, lets Reba slink off towards her bed without even stopping to detach her leash.

“You really hate me, huh? Trying to run away?” she says, leaning against the closed front door. Reba doesn’t acknowledge her words, instead disappears off through the kitchen.

The house is just as quiet as before as Trixie goes back over to the couch, not even the sound of her boots clicking against the floor now that she’s barefoot. She drops back onto the couch beside her abandoned purse and draws her legs up, chin digging into her knees. It’s a huge couch, really, bigger than either of the ones in their tiny living room back home, and she sinks back into the deep cushions after a moment or two. She lets her eyes close, presses open palms over them to block out the bright spot lighting above her.

“I don’t want to be here,” Trixie whispers, “I want to go home.”

Her purse starts vibrating next to her. Trixie lets her hands drop away from her face and leans over, peers into the bag. The screen of her phone is lit up and when she takes it out she can see a notification on the screen telling her that Pearl has sent her a message. The time flashes across the top of the screen and it’s later than Trixie realised; apparently it stays light a little later out here on the West Coast than she’s used to. She fumbles to unlock the phone and then Pearl’s message appears.

 

_Pearl: Girl, I thought you knew how to get a better picture than that._

 

For a moment Trixie’s baffled, then she remembers the girls that stopped her in the park. She carefully types back a message to Pearl.

 

_Trixie: How did you see it?_

_Pearl: They put it on Instagram! Where the fuck even were you?_

 

“What’s Instagram?” Trixie murmurs to herself, and decides she can ignore that for now and focus only on the second part of Pearl’s message.

 

_Trixie: I took Reba out for a walk._

_Pearl: I knew that dog was a bad idea. What are you going to do with her when you’re in Milwaukee? You can’t just leave her at the house again._

 

Trixie stares at Pearl’s message, tapping her nails against the screen of her phone; she can’t help but scrunch up her nose when she catches sight of their dark colour again. She wonders if she should book a plane ticket like she promised Pearl she should, despite the messages she found on her phone between herself and her mom. It’s not like her mom told her not to come home, after all, it was Trixie who’d apparently decided for some reason that she didn’t want to visit.

Trixie’s phone vibrates in her hand again and it snaps her out of her pensive moment. She looks down at the screen: apparently she has messages waiting for her on Instagram, whatever that is. She decides she can ignore them — she really needs to stop acting as if any of this is real. She tosses the phone back into her purse, then peers inside to see what else she carries around in it. Her eyes are immediately drawn to just one thing.

Trixie picks up the old, tacky lighter, considers it against her palm. She thumbs at its wheel idly but doesn’t get anywhere with it. It’s something she’s never quite been able to make work, something Katya usually laughs at her for when she snatches it from her and attempts to light it herself.

 

_“You’ve got to be faking. No one can be this incompetent with a fucking lighter,” Katya said from her spot in the passenger seat of Trixie’s car with a laugh, unlit cigarette dangling between her pointer and middle finger. She’d insisted on stopping for a smoke before they went into Alaska’s, thankfully agreeing with Trixie’s suggestion that they stay in the car instead of hovering on the front lawn outside Alaska’s house with the other smokers. Trixie hadn’t minded delaying their entrance for a few more minutes, happy enough to put off the cold walk to the door for just a little longer while they lingered in the car._

_“I’m not faking it! It’s your dumb lighter, it doesn’t work properly,” Trixie protested, flicking her thumb against the lighter again and letting out a frustrated noise._

_“Don’t try to blame my lighter. It’s lucky, if you can’t make it work then there’s no hope for you,” Katya replied with a roll of her eyes that was accompanied by a fond smile. “Here, look.” She leaned over towards Trixie’s seat, wrapping her hand around Trixie’s. Her cigarette held between her lips, she pushed Trixie’s thumb down with her own. The light caught easily, hot flame burning by Trixie’s skin._

_“See? It’s lucky, it always works,” Katya said around her cigarette, wrapping her other hand around both of theirs to keep Trixie’s steady as she leaned closer, ducked her head down a little to line up the end of her cigarette with the flame. As it caught alight her eyes flickered up to meet Trixie’s, and Trixie couldn’t look away from her as she inhaled slow, the tip of her cigarette burning orange in the dim light of the car._

_Outside on the lawn, someone laughed loudly. Trixie’s breath caught in her throat for a second and she pulled her hand back from Katya’s, letting her lighter drop out of her grip._

_“Are you okay? Did it burn you?” Katya asked, brows furrowed a little as she reached out for Trixie’s hand again, her other hand taking the cigarette from between her lips._

_“I’m fine,” Trixie said, looking away from her to grab the handle on the inside of her door. “You should smoke outside. I hate when the car stinks of smoke.”_

_“Oh. Okay,” Katya replied, sounding a little surprised. Trixie didn’t look back at her as she climbed out of the car, pushing the door shut behind her and grabbing onto the material of her skirt to make sure it didn’t get caught by the cold December breeze._

_“Come on. You can smoke by the door, it’s too cold here,” Trixie said. She started walking across the driveway to Alaska’s house without waiting to see if Katya was beside her._

 

Trixie closes her eyes again, closing her fingers around the lighter and pressing her hands together, leaning back against the couch with her hands touched to her forehead. The silence of the house feels all encompassing, and Trixie slides her hands around to her ears, pretends she’s blocking out the noises that drive her crazy at home in the night: the floorboards creaking as someone passes her room to get to the bathroom, the boiler coming to life with banging noises through the wall at five am, her mom’s alarm sounding not long after.

Trixie falls asleep against the deep couch cushions, Katya’s lighter pressed in between her palm and her cheek.

 

***

 

“Trixie! Wake up!” Trixie jolts awake to the sound of her mom's voice shouting from the otherside of her bedroom door. "Trixie, it's almost eleven! Just because you stayed up half of the night doesn't mean you can sleep all day now."

It takes Trixie a second or two to take in her surroundings, and then she rolls over in bed, groaning and burying her face in her pillow. It was just a dream – a bizarre, surreal dream, but still just a harmless dream. She's in her own bed, in her own room, in her own familiar house, not some silent mansion thousands of miles away from home.

"Trixie! Unlock this door right now or I'm taking the lock off and it's never going back on."

Trixie groans again, contemplates pulling her pillow over her head and pleading ignorance later after a few more hours of sleep, but she knows better than to mess her mom around when she’s like this - she’s never been one to make empty threats.

Besides, she thinks as she crosses the room to open the door, trying to rub the sleep from her bleary eyes with the heel of her hand. Given the weird dreams she's suffered through all night, maybe it's not a bad idea to stay awake for a while now even if she does feel absolutely bone-tired.

“Trixie, you can’t sleep the whole day away just because you got home late,” her mother says with a sigh when she comes in, going straight to the curtains and tugging them open unceremoniously.

“I’m not even dressed yet! You can’t leave them open,” Trixie moans, turns over and presses her face into her pillow to block out the bright winter sun. She hears her mom make a noise that’s halfway between laughter and exasperation and then the side of her mattress sinks down and her hand is on the back of Trixie’s head, gentle fingers untangling her hair where it’s knotted while she was sleeping. Trixie feels herself start to relax immediately, unwinding from all of the stress of the night.

They were just dreams. Weird, stupid dreams that now she can see probably came from everything that was going on last night, her stressed and tired brain trying to make sense of it all. She can forget about them now.

"Trixie." Her mom's hand moves away from her hair and her voice is stern again now.

"What?" Trixie asks. When she doesn't get an answer she lifts her head reluctantly to look at her mom – and feels her mouth drop open.

"What is this?" her mom asks with one eyebrow carefully raised. She has Katya's lighter in her hand, held between her thumb and forefinger.

"What?" Trixie breathes. She tries to reach for the lighter but her mom pulls it back.

"No, that's my question," she says, her voice the icy calm that tells Trixie she's in deep trouble. "Since when do you sleep with a lighter on your pillow?"

“I don’t – it’s not – it’s Katya’s,” Trixie says. She has no idea how it got there, doesn’t remember bringing it in from the car. Did it fall into her purse? But that still wouldn’t explain how it wound up on her pillow.

“I don’t see Katya here. Why do you have her lighter?” her mom asks.

“I don’t know,” Trixie says honestly, too surprised to try to come up with an excuse. Her mom snorts, looks down at the lighter.

“Trixie—”

“You know I don’t smoke. I don’t! It’s Katya’s, I must have taken it for her yesterday,” Trixie insists. Her mom looks a little sceptical, but Trixie doesn’t care that much. She knows she hasn’t done anything wrong, and she’s far more concerned with figuring out how the lighter ended up with her.

_“Can I borrow a light?” Pearl had said._

In her dream.

Trixie had the lighter in her dream.

Trixie swallows hard, reaches for the lighter again. For a second her mom holds onto it but then she gives it, lets Trixie take it from her hand.

“I trust that you wouldn’t do anything as stupid as take up smoking,” she says. Trixie nods, barely taking in what she’s saying as she looks down at the lighter.

The print on the lighter is faded, parts scratched away. Trixie’s sure it wasn’t like this yesterday.

But it was in her dream.

Trixie shakes her head a little, squeezes her eyes shut, trying to clear her brain. It was just a stupid dream – a dream that felt very real, but all the worst dreams do. She needs to get over it. She’s probably just never taken in how battered Katya’s lighter really is – she’s had it for years, after all. It makes sense that it’s not pristine anymore.

“Trixie, did you unplug your phone?” her mom asks. Trixie had practically forgotten she was there even though she’s sitting right next to her, and when she gets up Trixie pulls her covers up higher over her. She feels so tired, wishes she could go back to sleep, but given how shaken she’s been left by last night’s dreams she knows that wouldn’t be a good idea even if she could get away with it.

“It woke everybody up in the night,” she mumbles, voice muffled by her blankets. Katya’s lighter is clutched tight in both hands, tucked against her chest.

“Trixie,” her mom sighs. She kneels down, plugs her phone back into the wall. Trixie tenses, waiting to see if any messages are going to play, but the machine just lights up again and doesn’t make a sound. She’s in the clear.

So why does she feel a little mournful about not hearing Katya’s voice again?

“I don’t know what happened with the two of you,” her mom says, and Trixie groans and turns over, presses her face into her pillows again, trying to make her mom get the message that this is the last thing she wants to talk about. “You shouldn’t just ignore her. You girls have always been so close, don’t throw that away over some silly fight.”

“We didn’t fight,” Trixie says. She’s aware of how weak her words sound but can’t muster the energy to sound more convincing. Her mom laughs a little behind her and then puts her hands on the backs of Trixie’s shoulders, squeezes lightly.

“You should go over there. Talk to her! Take her her lighter, if you’re not going to use it,” she says. Trixie grumbles into her pillows. “If not, you can come with us to get your brother.”

Trixie has to hold back a groan at that. Sure, a day spent in the car would keep her away from having to consider what to do about Katya, but she’s not sure she wants to spend that many hours in an enclosed space with her family; she’ll inevitably end up sitting back with her little sisters once they get her brother and then she’ll be forced to listen to all of his stupid stories about college for the whole journey home.

“Get out of bed and get dressed, you’ll feel better for it,” her mom says. She squeezes her shoulders and then kisses the top of her head again. “Oh,” she says, “did you wash your hair at Katya’s before the party?”

“What?” Trixie says. She turns over to look at her mom but she’s already turned away from her, blissfully unaware of the implications of her words.

“I’ll put coffee on for you, don’t let it get cold,” she says before she leaves, pulling Trixie’s door closed behind her. Trixie waits for it to shut and then tugs the elastic out of her hair, pulls its end to her nose.

Her hair doesn’t smell like her normal shampoo. It doesn’t smell like it did in the middle of the night, either, like the floral scented shampoo she used in a cramped bathroom in a tiny Milwaukee home. It smells like the expensive shampoo she found in the bathroom in a big, quiet house.

Trixie lets go of her hair and pushes back her blankets, pushes up the leg of her pyjama pants. The bruise is still there.

“What the fuck?” she whispers to herself, shoves her pants back down in a hurry.

Maybe she managed to hit her shin in the night – her bed is tucked against the wall, maybe she knocked it against that somehow. But wouldn’t she remember?

And there’s no way she accidentally used a different shampoo, not when the only two in their bathroom are the one she and her mom share and the kiddie one for her sisters. There’s no logical explanation for it, no matter how hard she thinks, how far she reaches.

Moving practically on auto-pilot, Trixie gets up and walks through to the bathroom, clicking the lock into place. She turns the shower on, silently grateful for the unsteady but familiar stream of water as she strips off her pyjamas.

She shampoos her hair twice under the hot water, digging her fingers hard enough into scalp for it to hurt, just a little; she only feels herself start to relax just a little when the smell of her shampoo settles in the steam. She lets the water run over her until she can feel it losing its heat, can hear the water tank start to rattle and bang behind the walls, yelling at her to get out. She wraps a towel around her and goes back to her bedroom, leans against the back of the door for a minute and focuses on the feeling of her own carpet beneath her bare feet, the draft that comes in from the gaps in her windows no matter how firmly she closes them.

"I'm here," she whispers to herself, "it wasn't real. This is real."

She glances over at the phone in the corner. There's no light flashing on the machine.

Once Trixie's dressed she pulls a brush through her wet hair, grateful for the return to normality. By the time she gets into the kitchen the coffee her mom put on is lukewarm at best but she still pours out a mug for herself, hopeful that the caffeine will wake her up completely, help her clear her head. Her mom is busy with her sisters and Trixie takes advantage of them providing enough distraction to sneak back to her room for a little more peace and quiet.

Her bed covers are still in a heap on the mattress, and she sets her coffee down on the side so she can straighten them. The further away she gets from waking up the calmer she feels about her bizarre dreams. Maybe her hair smelt different from hanging out at the party, or maybe she got caught by Katya spraying her perfume before they left her house the evening before. There are plenty of logical explanations for it, and none of them involve Trixie somehow spending time in a freaky parallel universe? Parallel future? Whatever it is, it doesn't matter.

"It wasn't real," she tells herself firmly, gives her blanket a hard shake.

Katya's lighter flies up from the covers, lands in the middle of Trixie's bed. Trixie stares at it, drops the edge of the blanket and picks it up.

It really does look old and worn, the tacky design patchy in places where the pain has flaked away. Trixie considers it, passing it from hand to hand and turning it over. Maybe it's just deteriorated since she last looked at it - never mind that that was yesterday. It's not that unreasonable that she never took in how worn out it was.

It makes a lot more sense than the idea that Trixie somehow brought it back with her from a dream, anyway.

She tries to flick the lighter on with her thumb, idly reaching for her coffee with her free hand. She can never quite manage to do it, can't help but remember Katya's hand covering hers the night before.

_See? It’s lucky, it always works–_

Trixie gives up trying to get the lighter to work, squeezes it in her palm tight instead as she drinks her coffee. The metal is cold against her palm, still warm from her shower, and the jagged wheel digs into her skin. There's a sharp pain in the middle of her palm and she drops the lighter instinctively, squeezes her palm again before opening it up and staring at it.

It had felt weird the night before. Not quite hurt, really, just tingled in a way that Trixie couldn’t shake. But it had been right in the same spot, in the very middle of her palm – right where Jinkx had grabbed her hand in the forecourt of the gas station.

It can’t mean anything. Trixie knows it can’t mean anything; just because kids at school like to say that Jinkx is a witch doesn’t mean it’s true, Trixie isn’t stupid. She doesn’t believe in anything like this, can see that Jinkx is weird enough to get rumours spread about her without needing any real credibility to them.

And yet.

Trixie looks between her hand and the lighter on her bed, bites her bottom lip hard enough that it hurts. Then leaves the lighter where it is, grabs a sweater from her closet and pulls it over her head. She can already feel her wet hair soaking into the back of it as she walks to the front door, stops to put on sneakers and grab her car keys.

“I just need to go somewhere,” she says when he mom appears in the hallway.

“Katya’s?” her mom asks. She sounds a little hopeful.

“I won’t be long,” Trixie says, carefully avoiding the question. She feels too guilty to lie outright but it’s too convenient an excuse to get out of the house without having too many questions asks of her.

“We’re leaving in an hour,” her mom tells her.

“See you soon!” Trixie says, ducking through the front door.

It's freezing cold outside and as soon as Trixie gets the car to start she turns the heat up as high as it'll go, aims the ineffective blower towards her and presses her hands in front of it. She isn't quite sure what she's doing, doesn't have a concrete plan in her  head, but she can't shake the idea that Jinkx somehow has something to do with this. She wants to find out.

She just has no idea how to find her.

She can't think of anyone she knows who's good friends with Jinkx. She hangs out with Dela and Ivy most of the time; Trixie barely knows Ivy at all, isn't sure they've ever even really had a conversation. She used to be closer to Dela when they were in middle school and went to Drama club together, but she's all but lost touch with her now, certainly isn't friendly enough with her to show up on her doorstep to ask her where Jinkx is.

Jinkx hangs out with Alaska and her friends sometimes, though, and Trixie realises that that's probably her best option. If she goes to Alaska's place then she can hopefully tell her where she can find Jinkx, or at least give her her number. It's a start.

Trixie goes to turn the radio on, then remembers the influx of Stevie Nicks last night and her fingers hover over the button. It must have been a coincidence, but she isn't quite willing to risk it. The CD in the drive is Fleetwood Mac, too, since she let Katya play DJ for the journey over to Alaska's. Trixie opens the glove compartment and rummages through the CD cases inside, but when she picks out a different one and goes to eject Fleetwood Mac the drive whirrs and beeps at her. All of a sudden her car is filled with the opening  bars of Second Hand News and Trixie quickly switches it off, stares at the radio for a long second.

Her car really is pretty busted. It wouldn't be totally unexpected for the CD drive to give up the ghost, but it still makes something in Trixie's gut twist unpleasantly.

Trixie doesn't believe in signs from the universe, random occurrences that are supposed to make her believe in something, somewhere. She's not like Katya, forever rambling on about the universe and its mysterious ways, the importance of trusting in fate and letting things happen. She deals in facts and reality, has no faith in the universe to drop good things into her lap whether she works for them or not. She has no urge to start looking for signals or clues about what the world has in store for her.

And yet.

Trixie drives to Alaska's house in silence.

 

***

 

"Alaska! Are you there?" Trixie yells after she tries knocking on Alaska's door for the third time in a few minutes. She wouldn't normally but Katya told her Alaska's parents were away for a few days, so she feels pretty safe in the unlikelihood of anyone else coming to the door. She's sure Alaska must be inside, figures she's probably passed out somewhere, still half-drunk; when she crouches down to peek through the mail slot in the door she can see that the hallway is trashed. She can't really blame Alaska for wanting to hide away from it all for as long as possible.

"Alaska? Please," she says, bangs the side of her fist against the door again. She leans against it then, listens for the sound of anyone moving around inside, but either the door is too thick for her to hear anything or anyone aside is dead to the world. "God damn it," she murmurs to herself, sighs and steps back.

Trixie feels deflated as she gets back into the car. She isn't really sure what to do now: her plan to find Jinkx doesn't extend far past Alaska. It isn't like she can find her at school since they're still out for a while, so now she's pretty much out of ideas.

Maybe it isn't a bad thing. It isn't like Jinkx can have done anything to her, not really. She was weird last night, but it was late and Jinkx is normally pretty weird. It doesn't mean she – what, even, Trixie thinks. Cast a spell on her? Hexed her? Jinxed her?

Trixie can’t help but giggle to herself at that.

She heads back towards home, unable to think of anywhere else to try and unwilling to spend more of her time driving around aimlessly. She still feels distracted by everything and almost jumps a red light, has to slam her foot down hard on the well-worn brakes to stop in time. When she lurches to a halt she feels something fly out from under her seat, knocking against her foot. For a moment she can’t think what it could be – and then she remembers dropping Katya’s lighter yesterday evening. She didn’t see where it went, only heard it clatter down to the floor of the car.

But Katya’s lighter is on Trixie’s bed. She didn’t pick it up on her way out, didn’t see the need to bring it with her. She knows it’s still there.

As the light turns green, Trixie keeps her eyes straight ahead and kicks her foot back, hears whatever came out from under the seat disappear back under it. She grips the steering wheel tight and drives on.

When Trixie spots the gas station she turns into it, pulls up at a pump; mainly because she caught sight of her fuel gauge and realised she never did get any gas the night before, but also partly in a last-ditch attempt to get some clue about where to find Jinkx. It feels pretty useless, but it’s just about the only option she has left. She could try to get Alaska’s number from one of her friends and try calling her to ask for her help since she didn’t open the door, but the only person she can think of who she’s certain would have it is Katya.

She isn’t desperate enough to find Jinkx to explore that option.

Trixie climbs out of her car and shuts the door, goes to start filling up her car. She glances into the gas station to see how busy it is, and a distinctive head of messy dark hair catches her eye. Jinkx has lost the sunglasses from last night – it’s a little ironic given how much lighter it is outside now – and there’s no mistaking her where she’s standing behind the counter inside.

Trixie didn’t even consider that maybe Jinkx works here.

She abandons her car and heads inside. Once she pushes the door open and starts approaching the counter she feels nerves twist in her stomach; what exactly is she going to say to her? You acted like a freak with me last night and I think maybe you did something weird to me that made me experience some hyper realistic dreams would sound too crazy to say even to Jinkx, but what other way is there to put it? Is there even a way to put it without making herself sound totally insane?

Before Trixie can change her mind and duck back out of the store without Jinkx seeing her, the person at the counter pockets their change and walks away, leaving her exposed. Jinkx spots her right away and doesn't even look surprised to see her, just sends a serene smile her way as Trixie walks up to her.

"Back again already? You must have had a long way to drive last night," Jinkx says.

"Jinkx," Trixie says, determined not to be drawn into one of Jinkx's dreamy conversations that never come to anything. "What happened last night?"

Jinkx looks at Trixie for a moment, then turns to start rearranging the stacks of gum on the small shelves at the side of the counter. "You're going to have to be more specific, Trixie, it was a very eventful party," she says, evasive.

"Not at the – you know what I mean. Here, last night. You grabbed my hand, and.."

"It's called palm reading, Trixie," Jinkx says when it's clear Trixie isn't going to finish her sentence. "A lot of people would pay very good money for that. I did it for free! You're welcome."

Trixie makes a frustrated noise, braces one of her hands against the edge of the counter.

"What did you do to me?" she asks, her voice low and almost a hiss.

"What do you think I did to you?" Jinkx asks calmly. Trixie bites her lip, glances around to make sure there's no one listening into their conversation.

"You – I had weird dreams. It was like I was...like I was in the future," she says. Jinkx's lips start pulling up into a smile before smoothing back out again quickly.

"You think I made you have weird dreams?" Jinkx asks.

"I don't know what you did! I just know that you touched my hand and you said – you–"

"What? What did I do?" Jinks asks, her expression bland and unreadable.

"You said I have a big decision to make," Trixie says. Jinkx looks at her silently.

"Well,” Jinkx says finally, “don't you?" She’s looking Trixie dead in the eye, deadly serious.

Trixie grips the corner of the counter tightly, trying to figure out what to say.

"Did – did you–"

The door swings open behind her and Trixie looks over her shoulder to see a family walking through it, a couple and two small children who start screeching as they run down the aisle. Trixie looks back around and finds Jinkx still watching her closely, apparently unfazed by the interruption.

"Did I what, Trixie?" she asks. Trixie stares at her for a beat or two, then steps back from the counter.

"Forget it," she says. She doesn't want to spend all day going in circles with Jinkx when she's clearly unwilling to give a straightforward answer to anything.

Jinkx doesn't try to stop her from leaving, but when she gets to the door she says, "Good luck, Trixie Mattel."

As the door swings shut behind her, Trixie thinks: _good luck with what?_

By the time Trixie gets home, her mom's car is gone from the front of the house. She's grateful for the promise of a quiet house for the rest of the afternoon, and when she gets inside she finds a note left for her on the kitchen table:

_Trixie – Katya called! Be back later, we'll bring dinner._

Trixie sighs, pushes the notes aside and pauses by the stairs. She can see the light flashing on the answer machine on the kitchen side, probably with a message from  Katya; if she called their main line then she must have left at least one message for Trixie on her phone in her room.

Trixie decides to skip going into her room, curls up on the couch and turns on the tv instead. She feels tired down to her bones even though she woke up so late and she lays down, pillows her head against the arm of the couch and hugs one of the cushions to her chest.

She was supposed to be spending today with Katya. They would have slept in late without anyone banging on the door to wake them up, then maybe they would have gone for breakfast somewhere, laughed over pancakes as they dissected the ridiculous gossip from Alaska's party. They were supposed to have a few days to goof off together before being separated and forced to spend time with their families for the holidays before school started again in January. Trixie had been looking forward to it, and then Katya had to go and…

Katya had to ruin it.

Trixie brings the pillow in her arms up and presses her face into it, trying to drown out her thoughts. It feels like her life has suddenly become incredible complicated in just matter of hours, between everything that happened with Katya, her weird interactions with Jinkx and her crazy dreams. It's kind of overwhelming, and Trixie keeps her eyes shut and the cushion over her face even as she tries to focus on the drone of the tv in the background. She feels so tired, so ready to shut the world out for a few hours; when she feels herself start to drift off she doesn't even have the energy left to try to fight it.

 

***

 

When Trixie wakes up the couch feels different; she's lying on her back and there's something digging into her side.

"Reba," someone is whispering loudly, "Reba! Come on, come here. Come on!"

Trixie opens her eyes and finds Stevie kneeling up beside her, one knee digging into the side of her stomach. She's leaning over her, trying to grab at Reba where she's curled up beside her, but when she looks over and sees that Trixie's watching her she squeaks and falls back onto her butt.

"You're awake," she says, sounding startled. "Mama said you were sleeping and I wasn't meant to make you wake up."

"Good job," Trixie says dryly. She pushes herself up onto her forearms, looks around the room. It looks exactly as it did in her dream when she woke up here before except now there's a little more light coming in through the curtains.

Stevie is watching her uncertainly. She's dressed now and her long, fair hair is pulled back into two braids. At first she's still as she watches Trixie and then her hand sneaks over to pat Reba's snout, pressing small fingers into her fur.

"I just wanted to get Reba," she whispers. Her free hand comes up to her face and her finger goes into her mouth, big pale eyes fixed on Trixie's face.

"It's okay," Trixie tells her. She's far more concerned with wondering how on earth she ended up back here than being annoyed at Stevie for waking her up. Trixie grins and jumps up, quick as a flash, leaps off the bed.

"Come on, Reba!" she yells, running out of the room. Reba trots after her amiably.

Trixie feels like she shouldn't even be that surprised that she's back. She probably should have seen it coming; of course it wouldn't be confined to one bad night's sleep, one stressful dream. Of course she's here again when she hasn't been able to stop obsessing over it all day.

Trixie climbs out of bed, pulls the covers back up and smooths them out before leaving the room. She can hear Stevie running around in the kitchen, and when she glances over towards the bathroom she finds that the door is open and Katya's standing in the bathtub with the shower switched off, leaning up and trying to unscrew the shower head. Trixie doesn't realise she's staring until Katya looks over and spots her; the way her smile grows when she sees her, takes over her whole expression, makes Trixie's chest tighten a little in a not entirely unpleasant way.

"Hey," she says, and Trixie finds herself walking into the bathroom, hovering by the side of the tub. "Did Stevie wake you up?"

"Yeah," Trixie says, "she wanted to get the dog."

"Sorry," Katya says, although she's still smiling, "I told her to leave you to sleep, but you know what she's like."

"Oh, sure," Trixie agrees, not about to admit that no, she doesn't know anything about what she's like.

"How are you feeling?" Katya asks. She's leaning one knee against the edge of the bathtub, as close to Trixie as she can get without stepping out of it.

"Okay," Trixie says, doing a brief mental check of her body. She does feel okay, besides the fact that she still feels tired, somehow, and she wonders if she's destined to never feel well-rested again. It seems unfair that she has to be tired even in her dreams.

"Better than earlier?" Katya asks. She turns back towards the shower, reaching up on her toes to try to unscrew the shower head again. Her sweater is far too big and slips down over her shoulders; Trixie can see the freckles on them, the faintest of tan lines over her back. "Trixie?" Katya says, and Trixie realises she's waiting for her to answer.

"Yeah," she says, bringing her arms up around herself. Katya's looking at her again, her expression one of curiosity and a little concern, but Trixie just shrugs. Katya sighs and goes back to the shower, makes a frustrated noise.

"Can you help me with this?" she asks.

"Uh. Sure. What are you doing?" Trixie asks. She steps into the bathtub and her foot slips beneath  her; Katya's hand comes out to touch her arm, make sure she's steady. She doesn't drop it, fingers squeezing Trixie's elbow lightly.

"Seeing if I can figure out what's wrong with the shower. You were right, we can't just ignore it forever," she says.

“Oh,” Trixie says, remembering her earlier dismay at the shower. It feels a little silly now, but she doesn’t say that. Instead she moves closer to the shower, reaching up to unscrew it easily.

“Thanks. I have no idea what to do with it now, but I can figure it out. Maybe,” Katya says, reaching out to take it from her. They’re tucked in together now with barely any space between them, Katya’s hand still on her arm and her knee bumping against Trixie’s leg. Her face is so close to Trixie’s; she looks different, Trixie can’t pinpoint all of the things that have changed, but it’s still Katya. Right in front of her, looking at her in a way that Trixie can’t quite work out.

“No problem,” Trixie says, lets Katya take the shower head. Katya’s fingers hold onto the side of her hand when she takes it from her, pulls her in just a little closer until there’s no space between them. And then she’s kissing her again.

Trixie thinks it probably shouldn’t have surprised her as much as it did the first time, but she’s still taken aback. Katya keeps her hold on her hand and her other hand moves from Trixie’s elbow to her side, warm palm sliding down to settle over her hip.

Trixie doesn’t know what to do. She knows she should pull away, try to do it in a way that won’t freak Katya out, but—

 _It’s just a dream,_  she tells herself, _it’s just a dream, it’s not real_.

It’s just a dream. So who’s ever going to find out if she lets her best friend kiss her?

It’s not like it’s something Trixie’s never thought about. She figures it’s pretty natural, really; it would be crazy to spend so much time with someone, be so close to them, without ever thinking about what it would be like to kiss them. Without ever letting herself imagine it, sometimes. She’s sure everyone does it, really. Not that she’s ever asked anyone.

Cautiously, Trixie lifts her free arm up, puts it tentatively on Katya’s shoulder before sliding it around to her back. Katya makes a noise against her lips, sounds like she’s pleased or satisfied or relieved or somewhere between them all, and presses in closer to Trixie, kisses her with a little more intention.

Trixie lets her.

And Trixie kisses her back.

When Katya pulls back from her, it takes Trixie a second to take in her surroundings again. Katya’s hand in still on her hip, thumb moving in slow, oh-so-distracting circles, and Trixie blinks. Bathtub. Milkwaukee. Dream. Katya.

Katya, Katya, _Katya_ —

“Are you okay?” Katya asks. Trixie nods, drops her hand from Katya’s back.

“Yeah. That was, uh. That was nice,” Trixie says, finds herself leaning into Katya without thinking before realising what she’s doing and turning around, stepping over the edge of the bathtub.

“Um. Okay. That’s good?” Katya says, sounds bemused. “Are you sure you don’t need to talk about anything?”

“I’m fine,” Trixie insists, eager to avoid any more difficult to answer questions.

“As long as you’re sure,” Katya says, though she sounds uncertain. She steps out of the bathtub too, goes to leave the bathroom.

“Katya?” Trixie says, before she can second-guess herself.

“Yeah?” she says, stopping and turning back towards her. Her expression is open and her eyes bright, her mouth tilted into a small smile. Trixie feels a sudden urge to kiss her again, takes a step back until she hits the edge of the tub. “Trixie?” Katya says, sounds more concerned now. “Are you sure—”

“You know last – when we were younger?” Trixie asks, catching herself quickly.

“Sure,” Katya says slowly, “what about it?”

“I – did anything ever happen between us? Something really bad?” Trixie asks. Katya’s still looking at her like she’s trying to figure out what she’s talking about, her arms folded across her chest.

“What do you mean? Like a fight?” she asks.

“I guess,” Trixie says, shrugging. “Did I ever do anything, like…something really bad?”

After what you did to her? Pearl had said, sounded so casual about it. No wonder she hated you so much. I wouldn’t have ever spoken to you again, either.

Katya certainly doesn’t seem to hate her now.

“Is this what’s going on? Are you feeling guilty about something from when we were kids?” Katya asks. She unfolds her arms and pushes her hair back, her bangs fluffier when they drop back down over her forehead. “Trixie, whatever it was it doesn’t matter now! High school was, what? Fifteen years ago? Who cares! What did you do, bitch about me to Pearl sometime?”

“Pearl?” Trixie says, surprised.

“Trixie,” Katya says, stepping in closer to her again and taking her hand.

“I just – I never did anything really terrible to you?” Trixie asks again. Katya smiles now, squeezes Trixie’s hand in her own.

“I married you, didn’t I? I don’t think you can have done anything too bad,” she says. Her tone is obviously meant to be reassuring but Trixie can only hear _I married you_ over and over and over again on loop in her brain.

She has no idea how she could ever get to a future where she ends up married to her best friend. It’s not even like it’s legal for two women to get married, not in Chicago. Not in Milwaukee, either; not anywhere, as far as Trixie knows.

“I…” Trixie says, looks down at their hands. There’s a ring on Katya’s finger that matches her own.

“Trixie,” Katya says, her tone almost pleading, and when Trixie looks back up at her face she sees how worried she looks. Trixie swallows and tries to even out her own features, even gives Katya’s hand a squeeze. “Trixie, baby,” Katya says, and Trixie feels a little jolt go right through her at the words, a reaction she can’t control, “can you please just talk to me? You’re not acting like yourself.”

 _I don’t know how to act like myself because I don’t know who I’m supposed to be here_ , Trixie thinks, bites her lip as she tries to figure out how to answer her. Katya’s gaze on her is intense, like she’s trying to read her mind. Trixie’s sure that no matter what she says it can’t be the right answer, doesn’t want to somehow ruin things.

 _It’s just a dream. It’s just a dream, it’s not real_ , she reminds herself. She can’t ruin things because this is all just in her head.

There’s a crash somewhere in the house and Katya’s head whips around. “Stevie?” she calls out, already dropping Trixie’s hand and moving to the doorway. Trixie lets herself breath a little sigh of relief, flexes her fingers now that Katya’s let go of them. She feels hyper aware of the ring on her finger, presses her thumb into the smooth metal and closes her fist around it.

“It wasn’t me!” Stevie yells back a moment later and Katya sighs. She glances back towards Trixie, just for a second, then walks out into the hallway. Trixie hesitates before following her towards the kitchen. Katya turns off into a room she hasn’t taken in before, and by the time Trixie walks in behind her she’s come to a stop, one hand on her hip.

“Oh, it wasn’t you?” Katya says. Trixie realises the room is a small lounge, two couches lining the walls and a tv opposite them, a Christmas tree tucked into the corner. Now that she sees the tree she understands what the crashing noise was: it’s tipped over against the wall, almost completely horizontal, and Stevie is sitting on the floor beside it, wide eyed and clearly trying her best look innocent.

“I think it was one of the dogs,” she says, pointing over to the couch where Dale Cooper appears to be fast asleep before putting her finger back in her mouth.

“Sure,” Katya says, going over to straighten the tree back out. “Stevie, what were you doing?” she asks.

“I didn’t mean to!” Stevie wails, scrambling to her feet and rushing over to the other side of the room.

“So tell me what happened,” Katya says. Her tone is a little softer now but her expression is still stern as she watches Stevie. "I told you yesterday to leave the tree alone, there's nothing exciting for you to find there."

"I _did_ leave it alone!" Stevie insists, eyes wide. Looking between the two of them now, Trixie can't miss all of the similarities. The same fair hair, pale eyes, small nose. It's striking.

She's never imagined Katya with kids before. It's not something they've ever really talked about; on the rare occasion it's come up Katya's always just shrugged, said she’s never pictured it for herself. Trixie thinks maybe she's just never thought that far into the future. Maybe she's never let herself.

God knows Trixie doesn't, usually.

"I was just trying to do it how you showed me," Stevie says plaintively. She's leaning back against the edge of the couch now, watching Katya with wide eyes.

"Trying to do what?" Katya asks patiently.

"The spinny thing. You know." Stevie lifts her hands up above her head, wiggles her fingers.

Katya catches on more quickly than Trixie. "You tried to do a cartwheel and landed on the tree?" she asks.

"Mhmm. With my leg," Stevie says, gestures down towards her foot. "It hurt me. Look! Ow." She sits down properly on the couch and grabs her ankle; Trixie can just about see a small scratch, but from the way Stevie's eyes widen she can tell she hadn't really registered it until now. When she looks back up at Katya, her lip is wobbling. "Ow," she whispers.

"Okay," Katya says, expertly swooping in before the tears can start. As soon as she picks her up Stevie's clinging to her, bunching up the back of the neck of her sweater in her hands.

"It hurts," she says solemnly.

"Nothing that can't be fixed by the magic of band-aids," Katya assures her.

Trixie watches them as Katya carries Stevie past her towards the kitchen. She sets her down on the countertop and opens a cupboard, sorting through one of the shelves until she finds the band-aids.

This life looks good on her, Trixie thinks. She's always imagined Katya growing into some untameable free spirit once she’s away from school and her family, never stopping in one spot for long enough to call anywhere home; always ready to start some new adventure dictated by where she thinks the universe is calling her to. But now she's watching Katya with her daughter in a small house in the midwest, apparently living the most average life Trixie can think of – and she suits it. It suits her.

Trixie doesn't know what to make of it, or the warmth in her chest she feels at the scene in front of her.

"Trixie," Katya says, breaking her out of her reverie, "can you grab that?"

"What?" 

"My phone," Katya says, gesturing to the kitchen table while she unpeels the packaging from a band-aid. Trixie realises she can hear something vibrating and spots a cell phone that looks identical to the one she dropped earlier is on the table.

"Do you think my foot is going to fall off?" Stevie asks in a small voice.

"Nope!" Katya says, putting the band-aid onto her ankle. 

"It might, though," Stevie says thoughtfully, looking down at her foot. Katya looks over at Trixie and rolls her eyes, but she's grinning.

"Try not to drop this one, Trix," she teases as Trixie goes to grab her phone. 

 _Ginger_ , the screen reads, _slide to answer_. Trixie carefully swipes across the screen with her thumb, careful to hold the phone in both of her hands, then lifts it tentatively to her ear.

"Hello?"

"Hey, bitch! Where's your wife?" says a voice on the other end of the line.

 _My wife_ , Trixie thinks, _where's my wife._

"Uhh," she says, glances back over at Katya. 

"Who is it?" Katya asks. She tosses the band aid wrapper into the trash and comes over to her. 

"Ginger?" Trixie says, unable to keep the uncertainty out of her voice. Katya holds her hand out for the phone and Trixie passes it over wordlessly. 

"You said you wouldn't call me while I'm on vacation," she says into the phone. "No, I know but – what, why?" Katya's lips purse as there's the faint sound of Ginger talking. "Why can't Kasha do it? I...I swear, that stupid dog...Are you sure there's no one else you can ask?" Katya's eyes flicker over to Trixie before looking away from her again. "No, she's...I don't know if I can do it, really...She's just, I'm not sure...No, she’s not sick, it’s not that..." 

"Mommy," Stevie says. She waves her hands in Trixie's direction, "Mommy!" 

Trixie blinks. _Oh, right. Mommy_.

She goes over to the counter and Stevie reaches out for her; when Trixie picks her up, tries to put her back on her feet on the floor, she resists, holding onto her shoulder. 

"Do _you_ think my foot might fall off?" she asks Trixie, her voice a conspiratorial whisper. Katya's still focuses on her phone call, expression tight and concerned. 

"No, I think you'll be fine," Trixie tells Stevie. Stevie pouts, sticks two fingers in her mouth. 

"It might fall off," she insists around her fingers, her free hand moving from Trixie's shoulder to play with the ends of her hair. 

"Hey," Katya says, saving Trixie from having to reply when she sets her phone back down, "I have to go into work." 

"Oh," Trixie says. She realises she has no idea what work means for Katya, wishes she could ask without making her sound even crazier. Then the implications of what Katya's saying hit her properly: "Oh, no." 

"I know, I'm sorry," Katya says. She's already walking out of the kitchen and Trixie follows her into the hallway, Stevie on her hip. She's still playing with Trixie's hair and Trixie doesn't stop her. She keeps expecting her to pull on it like her sisters always would but she seems content with just wrapping Trixie’s hair around her fingers, apparently fascinated by it for no real reason. 

"Are you sure you have to go?" Trixie asks, trying to swallow down her alarm at being left here with Stevie.

 _It’s just a dream. It’s just a dream, it’s not real_ , she tells herself. She doesn’t need to panic, it’s just a stupid dream.

"Yeah. Ginger has this big meeting about one of her cases and Kasha was supposed to go in with her but she can't, something about her dumb dog eating something he shouldn’t, I don’t know. Katya goes into the bedroom and pulls her sweater over her head, tossing it down onto the bed before going to the closet. Trixie takes a step back from the doorway when she realises she's about to change her clothes, wonders if she should turn away.

"I can get down now," Stevie tells her, tapping her shoulder, "you're being boring."

"I thought you were worried about your foot," Katya says over her shoulder as Trixie sets Stevie on the floor.

"I think it's okay!" Stevie calls out, already dashing off into her bedroom at the other end of the corridor. Trixie glances back into the room in front of her and finds Katya buttoning up a blouse. 

"I don't think it'll take too long," she tells Trixie, unbuttoning her jeans. "What are you doing?" she asks when Trixie turns around. 

"Hmm?" Trixie says, staring at the wall in front of her. 

"Trixie—" 

"Do you really have to go if you're on vacation?" Trixie cuts in. 

"Ginger really needs someone there. It'll only be a few hours, I'm sure." Katya sounds apologetic but it doesn't sound like there's any chance she'll cancel her plans and stay home. Trixie doesn't say anything, twists her fingers into the hem of her dress while she listens to Katya get changed behind her. She almost jumps out of her skin when there’s a touch on her arm, and when she turns around she finds Katya fully dressed and looking at her in concern. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“What? Yes! Fine,” Trixie says. When Katya doesn’t say anything, she asks, “Is there anything I should, uh. Do? With Stevie?”

“What?” Katya says, blinking at her. “What do you mean?”

“Nothing,” Trixie says, shaking her head. “Don’t worry, I’m fine. We’ll be fine. I can handle it.”

“Right…” Katya says. She doesn’t sound convinced. Trixie does her best to look like she’s not panicking. She has sisters; she knows how to keep a little kid alive for a few hours. Katya watches her closely for a moment, then glances down at her watch and sighs, walks around Trixie in the doorway.

“Call me if you need me, okay? I might not be able to pick up right away but I’ll do my best,” Katya says, going to the small table in the hall and picking up a black purse from the floor underneath it. Trixie can see what she’s wearing properly now, a smart white blouse tucked into a black pencil skirt; as Katya puts on black boots by the front door, Trixie sees where her shirt has come free of her skirt at her back.

“Katya – your, uh – your shirt,” she says. Katya looks back at her, touches her hand to the collar of her blouse.

“What?” she says, moves her hands to her waist to run them around the top of her skirt. “Oh, stupid thing. Can you get it for me?” she asks, opening her purse and rummaging through its contents. Trixie swallows hard and moves to stand behind her, carefully tucks her shirt into the waistband of her skirt. “Stevie!” Katya shouts, before turning to grin at Trixie over her shoulder. “Thanks!” she says, grabs her shoulder quickly and pulling her in to kiss her, just briefly. “Before lipstick, I remembered this time,” she says proudly.

“Uh,” Trixie says, dazed. There’s footsteps behind them and Katya looks past her.

“Did you take my glasses?” she asks Stevie.

“No,” Stevie says too quickly, shakes her head. In the minutes since she’s disappeared into her room she’s pulled a long, flowy dress over her clothes, one of her long braids still tucked into the neck.

“Stevie,” Katya says sternly, “I need them for work, you don’t need them for dress up.”

“I might need them!” Stevie huffs, but when Katya stares her down she spins on her heel and goes back into her room. Katya produces a lipstick from her bag and leans into the mirror on top of the table, carefully applies it. It looks like exactly the same one she put on for Alaska’s party the night before: bright red, Katya’s signature.

When Stevie reappears she’s wearing a pair of black framed glasses that are clearly far too big for her; she puts a hand out to steady herself against the wall, blinks comically large pale eyes up at them.

“Take those off, four-eyes,” Katya tells her, sounding amused.  Stevie makes a big production of sighing and holding them out for Katya, rubbing her eyes. Katya puts them in her purse and then holds her arms out for Stevie, crouching enough to hug her when she reaches her. “I’ll be back soon. Have fun with Mommy, okay?”

“How soon?” Stevie asks. Both she and Katya glance over at Trixie and she immediately feels guilty over her sudden departure earlier.

“A few hours, I promise,” Katya says. Stevie looks uncertain until Katya presses an exaggerated kiss to her cheek and then she smiles, presses her fingers to her cheek and giggles when they come away red. “I love you,” Katya tells her, and Stevie wraps her arms tightly around her neck.

“I love you,” she whispers loudly, and Trixie sees Katya squeeze her a little. She feels like this is something she shouldn’t be watching, something that isn’t to do with her at all. Except apparently it is, or it’s supposed to be, and when Stevie abruptly lets go of Katya and runs back into her room Katya focuses on her again.

“Are you sure you’re—”

“I’m fine,” Trixie assures her before she can finish her question. What would be the point in saying anything else? She can’t ask Katya to stay – what reason can she give? _I need you to stay because I don’t know what I’m doing, I’m not supposed to be here; I don’t know what’s happening_. She can’t say that, can’t say anything, so instead she musters up what she hopes is a comforting smile. Katya seems to accept it, turns to take a coat from the rack by the door and slip her arms into it.

“I’ll see you later,” she says to Trixie as she opens the door. She seems to hesitate for a moment but then she’s gone, closing the door behind her; Trixie can hear her footsteps as she walks away across the driveway.

And then Trixie’s alone.

“Mommy!” Stevie yells from her bedroom.

Almost alone.

“Mommy! Can you bring me the matches?”

 _It’s just a dream,_ Trixie thinks desperately, _it’s just a dream, it’s not—_

Trixie can’t even finish the thought, let alone believe it anymore. Dreams don’t make her hair smell different; dreams don’t leave her with bruises when she wakes up. Dreams don’t leave lighters on her pillow.

This isn’t a dream, and Trixie is way out of her depth.


End file.
